Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz’s 2022 Formula 1 championship was marked by two major milestones: his first pole position and his first Formula 1 race victory, but at the same time a huge issue for this thoughtful perfectionist has been that in the first part of the 2022 F1 campaign, Carlos was not able to meet his own high standards, being outpaced by his Maranello teammate Charles Leclerc:
“It has been an extremely challenging season for me. I found a lot of setbacks at the beginning of the year with this new car, with the new regulations, that didn’t adapt to my driving style. I had to reinvent myself in many ways to try and find the pace. I didn’t give up. I kept pushing even in the difficult moments, and you can see it paying off now at the end of the season in terms of speed.” – the Spaniard said, in a recent interview for BBC’s Andrew Benson.
Those comments sum up vey well Carlos Sainz and his key characteristics: the Ferrari driver is honest, self-critical, humble, determined, hard-working and always looking to improve.
For some it may sound esoteric when a Formula 1 driver discusses about driving style or having difficulties in adapting to his car. But it is true that these things really matter.
A clear example is the world champion team: in the start of the season, Red Bull’s RB18 car was way over the limit in terms of weight and difficult to drive. As a result, Max Verstappen did not manage to fully capitalize on its speed and show his great talent up to the point that, in the first few races, he was not even that much quicker than his Mexican team-mate Sergio Perez.
After some weight was removed and the Red Bull RB18 car was optimized, it came alive for the Dutchman, who from that point became basically unstoppable.
One other significant example is McLaren: Daniel Ricciardo’s difficult period has been caused by struggles with the corner-entry characteristics of the car, which have not allowed him to match his teammate Lando Norris. As a result, McLaren decided to terminate his contract at the end of the current championship, which means that the Australian driver, who has secured eight race wins during his career, will not be on the grid for the 2023 Formula 1 season.
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At the Maranello team, Carlos Sainz’s problems were clear by looking at the gap to teammate Charles Leclerc, as the Monegasque driver was overwhelmingly superior in the first part of the 2022 F1 campaign. The F1-75 challenger has an oversteer balance – where the rear is loose and tends to move and slide: this characteristic is very much loved by Charles Leclerc, while the Spaniard was not able to handle as well in the first few events this year.
As a result, Charles Leclerc started from a better position than his Maranello teammate in in the first eight rounds of the season, thanks to his performance in qualifying, at an average advantage of 0.265 seconds, as Carlos Sainz was having a difficult time adapting to the characteristics of the F1-75 single-seater, as the Spaniard confirmed:
“I have never been 0.2-0.3secs off any team-mate in Formula 1 and I can never accept that,” Carlos Sainz explained, as the Spanish driver was even slightly faster than Max Verstappen in qualifying during their time together at Toro Rosso between 2014 and 2016. Later in his career, Carlos was evenly matched with Lando Norris at McLaren in the two years prior to joining the Maranello team:
“I always feel like I am quick in any kind of car, and for the first time in my career I found myself with a very competitive car but one I didn’t feel comfortable and natural with. I had to challenge myself and open up new roads of set-up and driving style that I wish I didn’t have to open, because I wish everything had come a lot more natural and positively. But it happened this way, and I stayed disciplined. I tried a lot of things and I made a lot of mistakes trying things. But it was all about trial and error and then coming back and discovering a new path that was a little step forward.” – he added.
As the 2022 Formula 1 session progressed, things started to go better for Carlos Sainz. The first turning point was the Canadian Grand Prix, a race in which he battled against Max Verstappen for the race win, just losing out in the end, while his Maranello teammate Charles Leclerc was out of contention having to start the Canadian Grand Prix from the back of the grid due to a power unit penalty.
Not long after that, at the Silverstone circuit, Carlos took his first pole position, after a thrilling qualifying session which was held in wet conditions, beating Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc. His first Formula 1 race victory also took place in the British Grand Prix, although it was helped by the fact that the Italian side scuppered Charles Leclerc’s win due to a poor strategy decision in the final part of the race.
Since that moment, the qualifying duel has been much closer. Following Silverstone, Carlos Sainz finished ahead of his Maranello teammate in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, the Belgian Grand Prix, in Austin (USA) and at the last race, which was held at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City in Mexico. During the last four months the average gap between the Ferrari drivers has been only 0.013secs – still in Charles Leclerc’s favour, but so small as to be almost insignificant.
Given the fact that Charles Leclerc is seen as the best Formula 1 driver over a flying lap, that is a strong performance from Carlos:
“I’m realistic and I know how good Charles is in those conditions. This year he has been driving at a level that is very close to Max or any other driver. And for me he’s in a way done a perfect season, apart from the two or three typical mistakes everyone does in a year, or the luck which maybe he has been lacking the same as me. I am not proud, because I am not ahead. The day I am ahead in the statistics is the day I will be proud. Until then, I will keep working at it, keep finding lap time in myself. But it’s a statistic that makes me proud about the progress – not giving up, not letting myself get comfortable with being 0.2secs behind, and always challenging myself to find new ways of driving cars, which is not easy.” – he explained.
“When you see other drivers on the grid, you can see it is difficult to turn around a season, or turn around the feeling with the car. You don’t see it very often. The fact I managed to do that makes me happy.” – he continued, as reported by the BBC.
The Ferrari driver pointed out that he does not like talking about his strengths given the fact that, when he does, he later reads interviews back and is not happy about it.
“Every time I do an interview and say my positives and I read them, I say: ‘Ah, this sounds super-arrogant.’ Maybe I go more towards the humble too much and stay in that way – modest. But whenever I see something a bit arrogant, I kill myself for it. So I always like to let you guys give your opinion of what you see as my strengths, while I criticise my weaknesses.” – Carlos Sainz said.
But like every professional in this sport, the Ferrari man is always looking to evaluate his qualities – good and bad, in order to improve. While BBC was pointing out to him the qualifying statistics compared to his Maranello teammate, Carlos Sainz confirmed he was very much aware of them:
“Of course I know. But he wouldn’t bring it up in an interview unless explicitly asked. He accepts that may not always be to his benefit. A lot of people… sometimes they don’t perceive my speed. And I know how fast I am; I just don’t like talking about it. I don’t give it value, because if I know in myself and my engineers and the people I work with know it, I don’t need more people to know it. Maybe I am not doing myself any favours, but it is how I am and I am not going to change.” – he explained.
Despite the inner confidence, the Spaniard is aware that there is still a lot of hard work in front of him, especially in view of the 2023 Formula 1 championship. While Carlos Sainz finished ahead of Charles Leclerc at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico, the general impressions of 2022 has been that Charles was the faster Ferrari car in terms of race pace, even in the second part of the F1 campaign, when the Spaniard proved a lot stronger on Saturdays.
And Carlos is happy to admit that race pace is a key factor in which ne needs to further improve:
“The race execution this year has been a weaker point of mine compared to the past. This year, we are struggling a lot with tyre management on these new Pirelli tyres. The starts with this car, for some reason, have been extremely difficult and we have an inherent problem that doesn’t allow us to get off the line as well as in previous years. With these tyres, I don’t control as well the tyre degradation and the race pace, and it’s more difficult to be flexible, and it doesn’t open up as many strategy choices as I would like to have or as I had in the past with McLaren. These are points I am going to work on in the final races and into next season to be more complete. But as you said, the qualifying gap has closed down a lot. I know I’m up against one of the fastest qualifiers – if not the fastest qualifier – on the grid, and so to be so close, it makes me proud to know there has been a lot of effort put into it but also that it’s paying off.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz concluded.
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