Carlos Sainz details reasons behind "best experience" with new Ferrari

Ferrari

Sainz details reasons behind "best experience" with new Ferrari

Sainz finished third in Saudi Arabia

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Friday 1 April 2022 14:35

Carlos Sainz has detailed the reasons why the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix proved to be his "best experience" with Ferrari so far this year.

After initially struggling in the season-opening race in Bahrain while acclimatising to the new F1-75, a week later in Jeddah, Sainz finished third behind winner Max Verstappen and team-mate Charles Leclerc

Sainz had explained ahead of the weekend he had been hard at work with his engineers to find answers for his initial difficulties.

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Asked what he had discovered, he replied: "The technicalities and the specifics, I think they need to stay in the team for the sake of privacy and not giving away too much.

"It is something so specific and so technical that it will be very difficult to explain and I think we need to keep a level of privacy with these kinds of things.

"But I can tell you it was the best experience this year so far, in terms of going to a track that 100 days before I was at with a super high level of confidence in last year's car.

"I was super quick in quali and in the race and I knew exactly what to expect from the car and what the car was giving me.

"One hundred days later, I come back and corners where last year I was very strong, this year I seemed to be struggling quite a bit more and I am not driving the car how it was meant to be driven. The car was not giving me a feeling I need for my driving."

Explaining how the changes had impacted his weekend, Sainz added: "These two combinations of things are the things I am working on and I think I made a step in the right direction for the race.

"But I must say, it has also given me the awareness of the two or three types of corners, the two or three places that last year, I was feeling so confident and this year I was not and I can take the points to work on and become stronger for the future."