Carlos Sainz

Sainz makes HUGE Ferrari claim after Miami debacle

Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz is unhappy at the team's lack of competitive pace on race days after a disappointing Miami GP

Dan McCarthy

Wednesday 10 May 2023 09:57

Carlos Sainz Jr. has revealed his frustrations with Ferrari after another poor Grand Prix showing in Miami, labelling their current race pace as a 'slap in the face'.

The Scuderia have endured a poor start to the season in stark contrast to last year, when they were very quick out of the blocks.

Sainz qualified third and Leclerc was seventh in Miami after a Saturday shunt but neither driver could produce any great pace during Sunday's race. The Spaniard dropped two places to fifth while Leclerc stayed seventh, being overtaken by eventual race winner Max Verstappen along the way.

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"We have to keep trying things, but every Saturday we fight for pole and then Sunday comes and we get a bit of a slap in the face in the race," he said.

"...Red Bulls on another planet, the Aston Martin also with better degradation, the Mercedes who are a second behind in qualifying suddenly two or three tenths down on us."

Sainz bemoans lack of "flexibility"

This season, Ferrari have managed to score only one podium between the two drivers with Leclerc finishing third in last weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

There have been fleeting moments of promise for the team in qualifying with Leclerc on pole position last week in Baku, no mean feat considering how strong the Red Bull is.

They have not managed to transfer that form into races though and they find themselves fourth in the constructors' championship, already 146 points adrift of Red Bull.

Sainz has been scathing of the car's inability to match their rivals on race day and thinks the setup is too rigid and inconsistent.

"We stopped on lap 18 or so and, when we stopped and did two or three fast laps with the hard to do the undercut, that ruined the rest of the race because we started to degrade and overheat the tyre," The Spaniard said after the race.

"We have a car with very little flexibility in terms of strategy, so if you try anything you get out of the ideal number of laps for the hard tyres and it can be very long. We suffer a lot from inconsistency, overheating and so on."