What is sandbagging?
With this English term which has the literal meaning of ‘sandbag’, in motorsport we indicate a driver who deliberately underperforms his potential, with the aim of hiding his real competitiveness from his opponents. Usually in the Formula 1 tests, the teams always keep a reserve margin, perhaps by loading their single-seaters more with fuel or running with a power unit mapping that does not allow maximum performance to be obtained from the engine. This consequently arouses great anticipation in view of the first qualifying of the year, when the teams are forced to reveal their cards. This is also what happened in Bahrain, where the front row monopolized by Red Bull was not surprising, but rather the smaller than expected gap over its rivals, which partially contradicted the predictions made after the winter testing session.
Banter at the press conference
“Ferrari certainly did a bit of sandbagging both in testing and in free practice“, Sergio Perez underlined in the usual interview with journalists reserved for the top three classified in qualifying. Charles Leclerc‘s reply is ready: “I don’t know. Definitely not as much as they think.” Max Verstappen took part in the conversation and exploited the double meaning of the term ‘sandbagging’: “Have you accidentally found a bag of sand in the car”. “No, no. I didn’t find anything,” replied Charles Leclerc, keeping up with his rival.
A few minutes later the conversation again went in the same theme. When asked about the piece lost by the SF-23 car of the Monegasque that caused the red flag, Max Verstappen again joked: “It was the sandbag!”, finding support again in Charles Leclerc’s reply: “Yes, it was probably that”.
Watch Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen joking about ‘sandbagging’ in the official press conference following the qualifying session for the 2023 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix:
— see video above —
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