"I had to change completely my driving style" - Carlos Sainz on his struggles in 2022 season

Carlos Sainz has said that he struggled compared to his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc at the start of the season, as he had to adapt his driving style to the new car.

The Spaniard did not have a great start to the season, failing to keep up with Leclerc. As the season has progressed, he has been able to compete with his teammate better.

Talking to motorsport.com about the struggles he's had this season, Sainz said:

"I kept it quite secret where my struggles came from. I think people who understand the sport, and people who do in-depth analysis, more or less know me by now, and know where the issues came from.

But just to make it short: I had to change completely my driving style. I had to change completely the way I was driving, in a very unnatural way. I had to change to an unnatural way and make it natural, which takes a long time."

The Spaniard surprisingly admitted that it took him until the Canadian GP to get to grips with how the car performed. He said:

"I also had to try things with setup. Most of them were in the wrong direction, and then coming back to find a good direction, and this takes races. There's no testing anymore, so you need to test in race weekends.

That means sometimes you have to commit to a race weekend with a setup where you basically got it wrong for that weekend. And it meant another weekend not performing. That accumulated frustration until I think it was more or less Canada that I found a bit my way. And since then, I've started performing a little better."

Sainz (202) is fifth in the driver standings ahead of the US GP in Austin this weekend. He trails his third-placed teammate Leclerc by 50 points.

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Carlos Sainz terms 2022 season start frustrating

Elaborating on his struggles, Carlos Sainz explained why the start of the season was frustrating for him.

The Spaniard was very impressive in the first season with Ferrari and even outscored Leclerc.

The second season started with Sainz lapping nowhere close to his teammate. Talking about the start of the season, Sainz detailed his struggles with the car:

"It was clearly, first of all, frustrating after such a first strong year with the team, where I found very few issues with the car. I felt like, after the first few races in 2021, I knew where the limit of the car was. I only had to find one or two tenths 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 could get on top of it."

He added:

"This year was finally a competitive car, finally a car able to battle for wins, and suddenly I find myself in a position that I've never found myself before, which is being a bit more than two tenths off. I've never been more than two tenths off a teammate, and I'm scratching my head to see where is all this lap time coming from. It was frustrating, because it was the first time I had a competitive car that could allow me to fight for wins."

Sainz is behind winner Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Charles Leclerc and George Russell in the standings. He will hope to fare better next season.