"I'm going to need to overtake a lot"- Ferrari's Carlos Sainz details why the 2022 F1 French GP will be 'a bit trickier than expected' after a 10-place grid drop 

Carlos Sainz, who will be taking a 10-place grid penalty this weekend at the French Grand Prix for a new allocation of control electronics (CE), admitted that the upcoming race is going to be a bit tougher than Ferrari had anticipated.

The Spaniard revealed that he tried to get a taste of what overtaking would be like in Friday's practice session and realized that it was not going to be as straightforward as he would have liked it to be, given that he would certainly have plenty of cars to overtake to have a shot at a podium finish, let alone a win.

As reported by Autosport, Carlos Sainz said:

“I tried a couple of moments with other cars to overtake, because I know I’m going to need to overtake a lot. And I must say that it was a bit trickier than expected mainly because there’s a tailwind on the back straight and, with this tailwind, it looks like the slipstream and DRS effect is a bit low.”

He continued:

“But I don’t have any other choice, I need to find ways to overtake and the best medicine for that is to just be a bit quicker come Sunday than what we are. Let’s see when everyone is running the engines modes flat out if we have the top speed to overtake. I hope we do, because I need to make up a lot of places.”

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Carlos Sainz expects high tire degradation at the 2022 French Grand Prix

After a productive run in Friday's practice sessions, Carlos Sainz revealed that, given the high temperatures and the impact such temperatures have on the new 18-inch Pirelli tires, it would be safe to assume that tire degradation will be higher than usual in this year's race at Paul Ricard.

Describing his expectations, the Ferrari driver said:

“It is very hot and, so far this year, every time we’ve seen it’s been hot the deg increases massively on these new Pirelli 18-inch tyres, and it’s going to be higher deg I think than what it’s been in the past here in Paul Ricard.”

He continued:

“So there’s work to do. Max [Verstappen] was very quick on the medium tyre, I was quick at the beginning and slow at the end, so all that speed that I had in the short run, I wanted to make sure that it translates into the long run.”

Ferrari dominated FP2 on Friday, with Carlos Sainz coming out on top ahead of his teammate Charles Leclerc. It will be interesting to see what qualifying and the main race have in store for the Ferrari driver.