The Spaniard had hoped to start this year after a strong first season with Ferrari in 2021, during which he had few problems adjusting to his new surroundings.
However, Sainz found himself on the back foot at the start of this campaign. He couldn’t be as comfortable with the F1-75 as his teammate Charles Leclerc.
That left him a few tenths behind Leclerc from the start, as he and his Ferrari engineers set out to find solutions to try to bring him more in tune with the car.
Despite a lot of setup experimentation, no change brought the breakthrough Sainz needed. It was only a complete overhaul of his approach to driving the car that helped turn things around.
Speaking exclusively to Autosport, Sainz said the situation he faced in the early races was difficult to bear as it was something he had never experienced in his career before.
“It was frustrating after such a good first year with the team, where I found very few issues with the car,” he said.
“I felt like after the first races of 2021 I knew where the limit of the car was. I just had to find a tenth or two in a certain type of corner and I was ready to compete. That’s why the second half of the season was so strong and I was able to get through it.
“This year it was finally a competitive car, finally a car that could fight for wins, and suddenly I find myself in a position that I’ve never been in before, which is to say a little more than two tenths.
“I’ve never been more than two-tenths behind a team-mate, and I’m scratching my head to see where all that lap time is coming from. It was frustrating, because it was the first time I had a competitive car that could allow me to fight for victories.”
While Sainz had previously been reluctant to explain how he finally made a step forward in Canada, before taking his first pole position and his first victory at the British Grand Prix, he finally explained how he had to take it upon himself to do things. differently.
“I kept it pretty secret where my struggles came from,” he said. “I think people who understand the sport and people who do in-depth analysis know me more or less now and know where the problems come from. But the long story short: I had to completely change my riding style.
“I had to change my way of driving, in a very unnatural way. I had to change to an unnatural way and make it natural: which takes a lot of time.
“I also had to try things with the setup. Most of it was in the wrong direction and then we had to rediscover the right direction. It takes races. There’s no more testing, so you have to test race weekends.
“That sometimes means you have to go into a race weekend with a setup where you’re wrong for that weekend. And that means another weekend doesn’t work.
“It built up frustration until the days of the Canadian Grand Prix, where I started to find my way a bit. And since then I’ve started to perform a bit better.”
While Sainz wouldn’t reveal any technical secrets, he said the issues mostly revolved around specific cornering speeds where Leclerc was doing better than him.
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
Photo by: Ferrari
“It was all over the place, but it was a certain type of cornering speed and a certain driving style that I didn’t like well with this car,” he said.
“That happens sometimes in a racing driver’s career. You jump in a car, like I did in 2021, and you don’t do anything: you just drive it, and you’re straight away fast.
“Then sometimes you jump into a different car, you think you had a good lap time, but then you see it compared to the others and it’s not that fast.
“It’s natural. But it frustrated me that this point in my career had to come when I had a competitive car.”
Sainz said the need for him to adapt more to what the car needed, rather than being able to change the setup to suit him, was driven by the technical limitations of the 2022 regulations.
“The team obviously listened to me and knew where my difficulties were,” he said. “But in an era of budget caps, and with car regulations as simple as we have today, these are very simple cars. You have very little freedom to play around with the settings.
“It wasn’t until very late in the year that we brought in a few things that helped me get a bit more out of the car.
“Everything from Barcelona, which was my lowest point in terms of qualifying speed and race speed, it was me who changed pretty much the whole driving style and tried to find a car that gives me a bit of confidence.”
Since stepping into the car, Sainz has seen his form improve which he hopes will set him up for a much better 2023 season.
However, despite very good performances, he admits that he is still not as comfortable with the car as he would like.
“There are little things that suddenly boost your confidence and that’s when I started to feel like I could be fast with this car too,” he said.
“At the start of the year, you always have doubts. Will this car ever give me the confidence I had with last year’s car? Will I ever find the right way to drive this car at the level I know I can You have those doubts.
“But then those little details help you trust the process and trust all the hard work I had to put in – although there were plenty of times I got it wrong with the tuning direction. , with my conduct.
“It’s still not a car that I like, honestly, in terms of how to drive it. I still have to think a lot while driving. And I don’t drive completely naturally yet. But at least I know that if I put it all together, I can be there.”
