Carlos Sainz on having to ‘copy a lot of stuff’ from Charles Leclerc to get the most from Ferrari car. Carlos had to ‘adapt’ and ‘copy a lot’ to match Charles.

Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz admitted that he had to learn a lot a lot from teammate Charles Leclerc during the 2021 Formula 1 season in order to be able to extract the most from his Ferrari SF21 car after moving from McLaren, which he successfully did especially in the second part of the championship.

Carlos Sainz has received widespread appreciations as a result of his extensive work at the factory in pre-season to adjust himself to his new surroundings as quickly as possible. Thanks to a great second part of the 2021 campaign, the Spanish driver even finished by outscoring teammate Charles Leclerc in the Formula 1 Driver Standings, with a P3 in the last race of the season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina circuit, which allowed him to overtake Charles and McLaren’s Lando Norris to take P5 in the Drivers’ Championship.

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Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have formed a strong partnership since the start of the season and the Spaniard admits they have learned from each other to be able to improve during their first year together in Maranello. But in the early stages specifically, Carlos Sainz confiremd that he needed to “copy a lot of stuff” from the Monegasque driver in terms of how he was driving to maximise the potential of the SF21 car:

“Since the moment I arrived to winter testing in Bahrain, I had a lot of things to learn from Charles. The way he was driving the Ferrari in a particular way to be as quick and fast as he’s being all year long, I’ve had to adapt myself [to it], I had to copy a lot of the stuff I was seeing on the data. Sometimes it was difficult to believe it was possible to do that, and it was so crazy-quick it was actually a bit shocking. But little by little, adapting and trying to learn from him, I managed to get to a good level. There are still things that when we go into the winter break, he’s much stronger than me in certain areas. We will exchange some information and try to both become better drivers learning from each other.” – he explained.

Carlos Sainz joined Scuderia Ferrari on an initial two-year contract, but the Spanish driver will most likely be rewarded with a contract extension before the start of the 2022 Formula One season.