Photo: Scuderia Ferrari Press Office
It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster year for Carlos Sainz at Ferrari. At the start of the season, the Spaniard found himself struggling to perform as well as his teammate behind the wheel of the F1-75 race car, trailing Leclerc by a couple of tenths in terms of overall pace.
Despite trying all sorts of changes and mechanical solutions, and despite all the efforts from his engineers, Sainz still failed to have any sort of significant breakthrough.
When he finally did turn his season around, it was because he had completely re-thought his approach to driving this year’s Ferrari.
“I’ve never been more than two tenths off a teammate, and I'm scratching my head to see where is all this lap time coming from. It was frustrating, because it was the first time I had a competitive car that could allow me to fight for wins,” he said during an interview with Motorsport.
He then opened up about what it took in order to get back on track, which is something he hadn’t spoken about before.
“I kept it quite secret where my struggles came from. […] But just to make it short: I had to change completely my driving style. I had to change completely the way I was driving, in a very unnatural way. I had to change to an unnatural way and make it natura, which takes a long time.”
“I also had to try things with setup. Most of them were in the wrong direction, and then coming back to find a good direction, and this takes races. There’s no testing anymore, so you need to test in race weekends.”
While he didn’t get into specifics with regard to technical adjustments, he did acknowledge that the issues mainly revolved around various corner speeds, which is where Leclerc was consistently quicker.
“It was a bit everywhere, but it was a certain kind of corner speed and a certain driving style that I wasn’t doing well with this car. It sometimes happens in the career of a racing driver. You jump in a car, like I did in 2021, and you do nothing, you just drive it, and you are quick straightaway.”
“Then sometimes you jump in a different car, you think you’ve done a good lap time, but then you see it compared to others and it’s not that quick.”
Overall, Sainz has had a reasonably strong year with Ferrari in 2022. He’s currently fifth in the Driver Standings with 202 points, just 5 points shy of Mercedes’ George Russell and well clear of Lewis Hamilton, who has 180 points.
When he finally did turn his season around, it was because he had completely re-thought his approach to driving this year’s Ferrari.
“I’ve never been more than two tenths off a teammate, and I'm scratching my head to see where is all this lap time coming from. It was frustrating, because it was the first time I had a competitive car that could allow me to fight for wins,” he said during an interview with Motorsport.
He then opened up about what it took in order to get back on track, which is something he hadn’t spoken about before.
“I kept it quite secret where my struggles came from. […] But just to make it short: I had to change completely my driving style. I had to change completely the way I was driving, in a very unnatural way. I had to change to an unnatural way and make it natura, which takes a long time.”
“I also had to try things with setup. Most of them were in the wrong direction, and then coming back to find a good direction, and this takes races. There’s no testing anymore, so you need to test in race weekends.”
While he didn’t get into specifics with regard to technical adjustments, he did acknowledge that the issues mainly revolved around various corner speeds, which is where Leclerc was consistently quicker.
“It was a bit everywhere, but it was a certain kind of corner speed and a certain driving style that I wasn’t doing well with this car. It sometimes happens in the career of a racing driver. You jump in a car, like I did in 2021, and you do nothing, you just drive it, and you are quick straightaway.”
“Then sometimes you jump in a different car, you think you’ve done a good lap time, but then you see it compared to others and it’s not that quick.”
Overall, Sainz has had a reasonably strong year with Ferrari in 2022. He’s currently fifth in the Driver Standings with 202 points, just 5 points shy of Mercedes’ George Russell and well clear of Lewis Hamilton, who has 180 points.
Google News