So far, the Chinese weekend for Scuderia Ferrari hasn’t exactly gone in the direction the team hoped for. The sprint brought a fourth and fifth place that left a bitter taste, but even more disappointing was the qualifying session, finishing with sixth and seventh positions over six-tenths behind Max Verstappen, who gifted Red Bull their 100th pole.
Two contrasting feelings, as highlighted by the drivers themselves, although Carlos Sainz preaches calm ahead of tomorrow’s race, aware that potentially the Prancing Horse team could have something more than their direct rivals in the pursuit of the podium, namely McLaren and Aston Martin.
For the Spaniard, it wasn’t an easy Saturday, given the incident in the sprint with Fernando Alonso that effectively cut him out of the fight for third place, but also the contact with the barriers during the first attempt in Q2. Carlos Sainz indeed ended up hitting the wall after losing the car in a spin coming out of the final corner, but fortunately, at the last second, he managed to partially straighten the car at an angle that didn’t cause significant damage to the suspension.
The only part to replace in the end was the front wing, which was completely destroyed in the crash: “It’s quite simple. I hit the inside curb, went a bit wide onto the gravel, and went into a spin. It wasn’t the ideal situation, especially in qualifying, but I think we recovered well,” explained the Spaniard, before explaining how he tried to salvage the situation.
“Honestly, I did it a bit on purpose [hitting the wall in that way]. When I saw I was going to hit the wall, I tried to turn at an angle that could compromise the suspension and rear wing less. Clearly, it’s difficult, but I managed to do it at the last moment, and fortunately, it allowed me to continue.” – he pointed out.
“We did a good lap in Q2 to recover from that moment and also to regain some confidence. We had to change the front wing, which behaved a bit differently, so the behavior changed a bit, each front wing has some differences, and that didn’t help. But we recovered well.”
Clearly, perhaps more was expected from Scuderia Ferrari, especially because in the previous races, they often played the role of the second force even in qualifying, while today they only occupy the third and fourth rows. Carlos Sainz attempted to give an explanation for these problems, emphasizing that it could be a mix of factors, including the characteristics of the track and the asphalt: “Already from FP1 yesterday, we saw that we weren’t very fast here on the flying lap. There are many long medium and high-speed corners, where last year we struggled a bit, here they are even longer, and we struggle even more. It doesn’t surprise me, but I hope that in the race, we can do better. We start seventh, I think the cars ahead are faster on the flying lap.” – the Spaniard continued.
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“This combination, then with this strange asphalt, which doesn’t seem to give us much grip throughout the weekend, made everything very difficult. I don’t think there was much more in our car today. We hope to have that extra tenth or two in the race compared to others that we often see.”
Referring specifically to the race, the Ferrari driver believes that the Maranello team has something more in terms of pace compared to McLaren and Aston Martin, as partially demonstrated in the morning during the sprint, while Red Bull is clearly out of reach, given their different starting positions.
“In terms of race pace, we need to focus not on Red Bull but on McLaren and Aston. They seem to have a better pace in qualifying, but I believe that over the long distance, we can have our chances. The problem is that there are three cars to overtake. For example, at Suzuka to overtake Norris, I had to extend my stint a lot. To overtake three cars tomorrow, we will need a great pace because then you consume the tires a lot trying to pass. My feeling is that we can come back, but we need to show a better pace than today.”
Finally, Carlos Sainz also closed the discussion about Charles Leclerc after the post-sprint controversies, due to perhaps an overly aggressive attitude from the Spaniard towards his teammate, which then led him to apologize after the race: “There wasn’t much to clarify, and there isn’t much to talk about now.”
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