Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz intends to increasingly use his Friday practice to experiment with the Maranello team’s F1-75 car as he attempts to find more pace and performance. The Spaniard was often very close to team-mate Charles Leclerc during the 2021 Formula 1 season and at times even ahead of him, as the Ferrari drivers were eventually separated by just 5.5 points in favour of Carlos, with the Italian side secured P3 in the Constructors’ Championship last year.
After a lot of hard work during the previous season and the winter, Scuderia Ferrari started the new campaign very much with a car able to challenge for the top places, but for now Carlos did not manage to deliver stellar performances similar to his Maranello team-mate.
The Monegasque driver claimed a great race win in the first round of the 2022 Formula One championship at the Bahrain International Circuit and came close to another victory one week later in Saudi Arabia before having to settle for second place behind Max Verstappen after another thrilling scrap between the pair.
Carlos Sainz has also had solid results, a P2 in Bahrain and P3 in Saudi Arabia, but already he seems very much at risk of becoming considered the number two driver at Ferrari in case Charles manages to create a gap in the following races.
Admittedly not yet feeling fully comfortable with the F1-75, Carlos Sainz wants to make gains over one lap and find the couple of tenths he generally has been lacking to his team-mate in this start of the season.
Carlos Sainz admitted that his engineers had some “interesting theories” for improvement which have not yet given the expected results, he is also aware it is time to do his own experimenting and evaluating during Friday practice before the qualifying sessions.
“I tried a lot of different things, especially on Friday,” – the Ferrari driver explained after the last race – “I did a lot more on the set-up than on a normal Friday, everything to discover the car a bit. That’s something I want to do more often on Fridays – experiment to understand the car better and see how I can get it a bit more to my liking. For qualifying, I can tie everything together to be fast.” – he added.
Carlos Sainz ended the Saudi Arabian GP eight seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen, who had beaten Charles Leclerc to the line by just 0.549s.
It was clear Carlos Sainz needs to improve to match the two drivers ahead of him, as he also pointed out to the fact that his performance in the corners had been a strength in Jeddah last year, but became a weakness in the 2022 event.
Nonetheless, despite still not finding the Ferrari F1-75 to be a perfect match for his driving style so far, Carlos Sainz definitely felt he had made a breakthrough in race performance at the Saudi Arabian GP.
“Last year I was very fast in the corners, where now I was struggling. It was important to find the middle ground and move forward. The car doesn’t really give me the feeling I need to make the most of my style yet. Those are two things I have been working on and I think we definitely made a step forward for the race. The confidence of last year isn’t there yet, but I’ve seen some good points in terms of data and we can definitely move forward with that.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz concluded.
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