Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz explained that the Maranello team and himself will use their learnings from his difficult Australian Grand Prix weekend at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne as a booster for following Formula 1 events.
Carlos Sainz started the 2022 season with some solid podium finishes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but left Melbourne without any points. At the end of the qualifying session, Carlos admitted that everything that could go wrong in the session did go wrong, with a first run in Q3 deleted by a red flag due to Fernando Alonso’s crash. In the second run, technical issues and cold tyres did not allow him to maximize the potential of his F1-75 car and had to start Sunday’s race from P9.
Sadly, things went from bad to worse after just a few laps at the Albert Park Circuit, when a lousy start was compounded by a terminal off-track excursion that left the Spanish driver’s car beached in the gravel trap, which ended his poor Melbourne weekend. Asked if the Australian Grand Prix weekend had been one of the worst in his Formula One career, Carlos Sainz admitted that he didn’t remember a more difficult few days, especially as they had been preceded by such high hopes after the positive impressions on Friday practice.
“It’s a difficult one to answer, because I don’t remember exactly my other 100 and something races in Formula 1,” he said – “So it’s tricky to know if it’s the worst one, but it’s definitely a weekend [where] it looked like it was going well. It looked like I was a lot more at home with the car, and putting together some strong laps during the weekend. Everything turned out to be probably, yes, one of my most disappointing weekends in Formula 1.” – he added.
Carlos Sainz’s difficult Melbourne race, in terms of both performance and points, led Sky F1 expert Martin Brundle to state that the Maranello team could decide to focus on the championship leader Charles Leclerc to the Spaniard’s detriment: “He may well end up having to play a supporting role to Leclerc from here, depending on how the competition shapes up and if he can win the next couple of races, which is not out of the question.” – Martin Brundle explained.
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Unsurprisingly, Carlos Sainz cannot be happy with the outcome of this race as he vows, with the help of his team, to use the lessons learned from his troublesome weekend to put himself back on the right track starting with the 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix: “The important thing is that I learned from it, that we also learn as a team from it” – the Spanish driver added – “To be more perfect, to be more strong, to be more robust in all the aspects, and keeping in mind that [there are] 20 races to go, that anything can happen. We can only use this weekend as a booster, to make sure that we learn from it and we have more perfect 20 races left.” – Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz concluded.
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