Between the bad weather in the first session and a gearbox failure in the afternoon session, the Ferrari driver managed to complete only a handful of laps on the first day of practice for the Dutch Grand Prix, leaving him without data. This is already a heavy setback, especially on a challenging track like Zandvoort for the SF-24.
Carlos Sainz didn’t have much to say at the end of the first day of practice for the Dutch Grand Prix. After announcing that his future would be with Williams, the Spanish driver had said he could finally approach race weekends more relaxed, but both the weather and his Ferrari played a cruel trick on him.
The morning session was affected by rain and strong winds, which led to very limited running for everyone. However, the sun came out over Zandvoort for the second free practice session, which took place on a dry track. But the son of a former driver couldn’t take advantage of it, as the gearbox of his SF-24 failed after just seven laps.
This mishap relegated him to the bottom of the timesheets and, more importantly, prevented him from gathering information for the rest of the weekend. Looking on the bright side, at least this failure won’t result in a penalty, so he won’t face an additional handicap on top of the valuable time lost.
“Basically, I didn’t run today. I only did three laps in FP1 due to the weather, but that’s something that affected everyone. In the second session, we had a gearbox issue that completely ruined the session, allowing us to complete just 2-3 flying laps,” Carlos Sainz said.
“It will be a sort of Sprint weekend for me, because I’ll only have one session to try and recover the lost ground and perform well. Tomorrow morning, I will have to start strong in FP3 to find the pace immediately, hoping then to put in some good performances,” he added.
The problem is that today seemed to be a particularly challenging day for Ferrari, as his teammate Charles Leclerc also couldn’t do better than ninth, with a gap of over seven-tenths. After all, the Dutch track was, on paper, one of the most difficult circuits for Ferrari.
“It wasn’t an ideal situation; we needed to be on track with both cars because we knew this was one of the most challenging tracks for us, probably due to the very long and fast corners. It would have been better to try things with two cars, but tomorrow morning, we will do our best to make up for the lost time,” Carlos Sainz concluded.
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