Carlos Sainz looks back on having to change his driving style to adapt to Ferrari F1-75 car

Carlos Sainz looks back on having to change his driving style to adapt to Ferrari F1-75 car. Carlos on having to change his driving style.

The 2022 Formula 1 championship was Carlos Sainz’s second year with Scuderia Ferrari, but in some respects the Spanish driver was forced to start from scratch. The new generation of single-seaters has in fact forced the drivers to review their driving style, with some encountering more difficulties than others. Among these is there was also Carlos Sainz Jr., who retraced the difficulties of the beginning of the year:

“The first impact with the F1-75 was not the easiest: the car was completely new both for me and for the engineers and it didn’t suit my characteristics, so I had to work a lot on myself, on my driving style and on the car. We worked hard with the team to overcome the initial limits, which maybe weren’t so evident from the outside, because I felt that the sensations weren’t the right ones yet” – he explained.

The turning point for the Spaniard was the Canadian Grand Prix. In a race that saw Charles Leclerc starting from the rear due to a power unit replacement, all of the Maranello team’s hopes were focusing on Carlos Sainz, who battled Max Verstappen for the win right up to the end: “The change of pace probably took place in Canada. It took me a while, but also because there were some negative races, like the ones in Australia at Imola where I didn’t even complete the first lap, losing important time behind the wheel. In Montreal, where if you don’t push hard enough you’ll find yourself behind and if you overdo it you risk hitting the wall, I started having a positive feeling with the F1-75 familiar. Doing the whole race battling with Max made me realize that I too was on the right track” – the Ferrari man pointed out.

Looking back at the 2022 Formula 1 season, former Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto also underlined the different process of adaptation between Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, indicating precisely the Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve as the moment of an important step forward made by the Spaniard: “Charles Leclerc immediately found himself at ease in the car and we saw this from the dominant way he won in Bahrain and Australia, but also in an absolute sense: the nine pole positions are a clear sign of his class, as is the victory in Austria. […] Carlos needed a few more races to get in tune with a completely different single-seater than the one of 2021, but starting from the Canadian GP he began to master the F1-75, competing in a perfect weekend at Silverstone, in which he took pole position and victory. He fully deserved the success and in the second part of the season he was very solid despite unfortunate races like the one in Austin where he took pole position and was taken out on the first lap,” concluded the ex-Team Principal of Ferrari.