Ferrari and Carlos Sainz heading to Zandvoort
Carlos Sainz has a little taboo to break at Zandvoort. The Spaniard, in fact, has never gone beyond seventh place in the Dutch Grand Prix race and would like to secure a top-5 finish this Sunday at the Zandvoort circuit located in the dunes north of Zandvoort, the Netherlands, near the North Sea coast line.
Achieving such a result, considering Red Bull’s strength, McLaren’s improvements, and Mercedes’ confidence on high-downforce circuits, doesn’t seem simple. However, the 2023 Ferrari has taught us to be wary of pre-race predictions, as emphasized by Carlos Sainz himself, who wants a more predictable car in the second part of the season.
Carlos Sainz’s comments
“I relaxed during the break, it was very nice. I spent time with friends, but we are still within a Formula 1 season, and you start thinking about what could have been done better. So, we have already switched back on and are ready to restart,” were his words in the press conference. “The spirit within Ferrari is to understand the car of this year to the maximum, trying something different in the free practices to see what we’re missing compared to Red Bull and aiming to improve the 2024 car as well, building it in the best possible way. I spent a lot of time in the simulator, trying to turn the season around, but we have also worked towards the next season to position ourselves better for next year.” – the Spaniard pointed out ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix.
“It’s not a secret that consistency has been lacking this year. It was difficult to predict where we would be strong and where not, the difference between Spa and Budapest was clear. This means there’s something intrinsic that we don’t fully understand and can’t predict, and that’s what we’re focusing on in the second part of the season to set things right. The positive side is that the car always performs well in qualifying, where we relatively do better compared to race pace. We need to focus on improving race pace while holding on to our strong qualifying performance, and here at Zandvoort, we need to aim for a clean weekend.” – the Ferrari man added.
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“It’s extremely difficult to make predictions for us this year, especially since the margins are very tight between us, Mercedes, Aston Martin, and McLaren. We’re all within one to two tenths, and there’s very little difference between third and ninth place. This will be the key to the weekend,” he concluded. “We have ten races left to try to understand everything, it’s not a secret that since Bahrain, we’ve seen something we weren’t fully comprehending. However, we’re trying many different things, gathering many ideas that could be useful even for the 2024 car, and we hope to reap the rewards. We’ve understood the basic problem, from the early developments, we’ve tried to improve the main weak point, but there are many other factors we’re trying to understand, yet I repeat that the differences with Mercedes, Aston Martin, and McLaren are small.”
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