Carlos Sainz admits he will be his own harshest critic after driver error in Australian GP

Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz admitted that he will be very hard on himself in after evaluating his driver mistake that prematurely ended his race at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne last weekend. For Carlos, things went well in Australia until Q3 on Saturday: at that stage he could only finish the qualifying session in P9, due to a red flag during his first fast lap and a mistake on his second run also caused by the fact that he was not able to make a proper preparation lap before his only fast run.

Still, there were the prospects of a solid recovery race on Sunday, but worse followed at the start of the Australian Grand Prix: a problem with the steering wheel meant he had to change it just before the start. With the settings on the wheel incorrect, Carlos Sainz had a poor start and lost several places outside the top ten. In his panic to regain the lost places as soon as possible, he made a mistake and went off the track at the high-speed chicane, spinning off to beach his F1-75 in the gravel, which meant the end of the race after only a few laps.

Looking back on the outcome of his Australian Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz explained the problems which led to his poor race start: “We had similar problems with the switches with the car as [Saturday]. Some switches [were] not working; we had to change the steering one minute right before the start, which meant the second steering wheel was not well configured for the start. I had the wrong torque map setting, which put me in anti-stall at both starts (formation and race) which meant, unfortunately, we went backwards on the Hard tyre. Then, with the rush of wanting to come back through the field, I made a driver mistake.” – the Spanish driver added.

Carlos Sainz impressed with his consistency during the 2021 Formula 1 season, which was his first year alongside the Maranallo team, making the Australian Grand Prix race-ending error a very rare occurrence. Carlos Sainz completed every race last season and only finished outside the top ten on two occasions. But at the same time, his poor performance in Melbourne was in stark contrast to the utter dominance of the weekend by his Maranello teammate Charles Leclerc, who scored the second win of the 2022 Formula 1 season for Ferrari.

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Carlos Sainz held his hands up to admit he hadn’t responded to his setbacks in the correct manner, while also pointing out that there is work to do on Ferrari’s part to make sure tehcnical problems do not affect the weekend preparations: “I need to be hard on myself for [a] driver mistake. Obviously, we’re still getting to know these tyres and clearly the Hard tyre this weekend was very tricky in the initial laps. As an initial conclusion, I shouldn’t have pushed so much and I should have stayed patient. But, at the same time, we were not perfect as a team. Too many steering issues, anti-stall, problems in quali, which always put you on the backfoot – it puts you under pressure and I didn’t react accordingly.” – Carlos Sainz concluded.