Carlos Sainz has conceded he was starting to feel self-inflicted pressure to win a final race with Ferrari before departing the team at the end of the 2024 F1 season.
The 30-year-old vanquished that self-imposed demand at the Mexico City Grand Prix, winning from pole in a dominant display.
When the Spaniard moves to Williams, he will likely lose the opportunity to grace the podium for the foreseeable future. That has left him wanting to extract the most out of his remaining time in race-winning machinery.
Despite winning in Australia earlier in the year, Sainz wanted to close out his Ferrari chapter with a final victory. In doing so, he took multiple wins in a single season for the first time in his F1 career.
"I think the important thing is that we got that win," he told media including RacingNews365 at Interlagos ahead of this weekend's São Paulo Grand Prix. "I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, on my shoulders, to try and get another win before the end of the year.
"I was starting to feel that pressure that I was putting onto myself, so I'm so happy that I did that, and I did it in the way I did it in Mexico - and happy that it coincided with my family [being] there, who have been a great support to me."
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Sainz will not 'go on holiday'
However, despite achieving that final victory with Ferrari, Sainz insists he will not "go on holiday" for the rest of the campaign, as the Scuderia embarks on a four-round run to overhaul McLaren in the constructors' championship standings.
The pair overhauled Red Bull at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez to move to within 29 points of McLaren.
Sainz is adamant he will "fight for every single opportunity" to close out the year. The four-time grand prix winner and team-mate Charles Leclerc now have every chance of taking the fight to Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
"From now on, if another opportunity arises, I will be the first one to win it," Sainz said confidently.
"It's not like suddenly I'm going relax now and go on holiday. I'm going to still be there fighting for every single opportunity, but the important thing for me was to get one more before I left."
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Join RacingNews365's Ian Parkes, Sam Coop and Nick Golding, as they dissect last weekend's Mexico City GP and look ahead to this weekend's race in São Paulo. Max Verstappen's penalties are a main talking point and whether the punishment from the FIA was too lenient, Ferrari's rise is also discussed.
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