Carlos Sainz praised Ferrari's decision to pit for Intermediate tyres when they did as he secured his third podium finish for the team at the Russian Grand Prix. The Spaniard led the opening stages of the race before being passed by McLaren rival Lando Norris. As the race progressed, Sainz appeared to fall back and admitted afterwards that tyre wear was to blame. Nevertheless, the late rain helped Sainz climb back into P3, and he hailed his switch to Intermediates as the "right call at the right time". "I got a good launch [at the start]," Sainz said after the race. "The priority was to not lose position to George [Russell], and then I managed to get tucked in behind Lando and do a bit of 'send' around the outside of Turn 2, which worked perfectly. "Then unfortunately the graining came, and that's where our race started to go bad and we started to suffer a lot. We had to go very early on to the Hard, [there was] a lot of [tyre] management going on, and then finally the rain came at the worst possible time because my Hard tyres were going away. "We boxed, made exactly the right call at the right time and managed to get back into P3." The result means Sainz now sits sixth in the standings, 8.5 points up on teammate Charles Leclerc.
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