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Carlos Sainz feels that he fell behind Charles Leclerc early in the championship when the latter was able to hit the tarmac running while the Spaniard struggled to adapt.
When questioned by Motorsport as to why he fell behind the Monegasque in the championship, Carlos Sainz pointed to the early season success of his teammate. He said:
“Probably the start of the season. Those first six or seven races when the car was the most competitive, he was doing the pole positions and winning the races you know. Lately obviously I got a lot of more up to speed and I’m driving a lot better the car, but also it’s true that the car is not maybe at the level that it was at the beginning of the year, or let’s say Red Bull has stepped it up and it’s not as easy to score a pole position or a win as it might have been at the beginning of the year, no. But he’s done a better job to me this year clearly, both in driving and race execution and yeah, he felt straight away more at home with the car than me.”
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Carlos Sainz further added that while there has been an improvement of sorts in how he has been able to adapt to the car, it's still not at 100% for him. He said:
“I’ve been in this fight through the whole year to try and get myself to a level similar to last year. Am I there? I don’t think so. I think I still have a few things with this car that still don’t come naturally and I would need to change a lot of things. But yeah, I’m now at a decent level where I’m confident that I can score some good results and be consistent with it. But yeah, I look forward also to next year’s car and see if I can get straight away more on the pace.”
Carlos Sainz claims the Ferrari F1-75 does not come to him naturally
Carlos Sainz feels the latest Ferrari challenger requires him to think a lot. While his teammate Charles Leclerc has been able to adapt better to this year's car, the Spaniard has struggled because driving this car does not come naturally to him. He said:
“I don’t know there’s just cars where you drive them and you know without even looking at the lap time, you know you’ve done a good lap and you know there’s not going to be your teammate or someone else going quicker than you. And then there are other cars that you think you’ve done a good lap time but you know it’s not going to be enough because you’ve done some mistakes here or there. And then there are cars that you need to think while driving and there’s cars that you drive naturally. And this year while driving I need to think a lot. I need a lot of headspace to know that this kind of corner, I need to do it that way, this kind of corner, I need to do it the other way.”
Carlos Sainz trails his teammate Charles Leclerc by 50 points this season. In 2021, however, he was able to outscore the latter by the last race of the season.
