F1 News
Sainz happy with own development and performance at Ferrari so far
- GPblog.com
Carlos Sainz seems to be adapting seamlessly to the Ferrari team this season. Although the Spaniard's recent weekends have consistently contained a few mistakes, something that more often than not has meant overtime for his mechanics, the difference in speed between him and teammate Charles Leclerc is generally close. Something we also saw Sainz do when he was Verstappen's teammate at Toro Rosso.
No expectations
The balance of power between the two Ferrari drivers is minimal, something that is also reflected in the ranking of both. Leclerc is in sixth place with 104 points, directly followed by his teammate with 97.5 points. In that respect, Sainz is doing much better than other drivers who changed team, like Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren and Sergio Perez at Red Bull Racing.
Sainz himself has noticed that too, by the way, as he reports at Soymotor.com: "I arrived without expecting too much, without putting too many expectations on myself because I had a total of one and a half days to learn how the car works. I think I did 150 or 200 laps before the first race." Yet Sainz too is experiencing that driving at Ferrari is more than just driving fast. "You realise that no matter how fast you are, it's complicated. I'm far from 100%, but then I see the position in the championship and how close I am to where I want to be and then I say 'if I keep working like this, I don't think it will take long."
Similarities with Leclerc
The Spaniard thinks it can only get better, while he says he has many similarities with Leclerc: "We are much more similar than you can imagine. Then you look at the data and you see that one is three-hundredths of a second off the other in one corner and the other three-hundredths of a second off the other. In Zandvoort qualifying, he was six thousandths ahead of me and in Monza, I was half a tenth of a second ahead of him."
Because his teammate has been with Ferrari longer, Sainz also sees that Leclerc is a little more comfortable in the SF21, but Sainz is nonetheless happy with the strides he has made. "I see him in the race with more confidence in the car. I'm not the aggressive Carlos from McLaren and I'm sure if you think about the Carlos of a year or two ago, you wouldn't say he's so calculating and analytical now."