Carlos Sainz had far and away his best F1 season to date. His debut victory and his first ever pole position which was added to twice more in the campaign.
An ambitious young man on the back of this campaign. Recently quoted as saying that he wants to take the fight to two time WDC Max Verstappen in 2023. The season just finished saw him suffer mechanical gremlins and glitches but on the back on the performance of his team mate Charles Leclerc, he wants more from 2023. As it was Red Bull and Verstappen dominated the campaign so Sainz perhaps wasn’t in a position to fight to which he concurs.
“ Clearly this year, it wasn’t, because I’m very far from him in the Championship and the way that he has performed in combination with Red Bull, they’ve been just the faster package: the quicker car; the quicker driver. I do feel like with a perfect year, it should be possible but we will need to be perfect next year. And we will need to improve the car. I will need to improve, especially in the first half of the season and in the races. So that is the target – and you need to put high targets to yourself and onto the team like this. You can try and accomplish them. And then let’s see what life brings next year to the table”.
As per above, he is extremely ambitious and wants to better his 2022 campaign. For Sainz and Ferrari, they need a similar start to the ‘23 season that they had in ‘22 but need to maintain it if they are to have any chance at all of taking it to Red Bull throughout the 22 race campaign.
“I feel we have chances. I mean, Red Bull has been dominant, but they’ve been dominant without being clearly ahead in pace and and… yeah, pure quali pace and race pace. So I don’t feel like we are so far behind in terms of car development and car performance. If you think about it, I was on pole in Austin, so it means that we were one-two in Austin in quali. So it must be that our car is actually not that far from the Red Bull. And what we need to focus on is in trying to understand next year’s tyres. See how we can be quicker in the race because it’s clear that the Red Bull is particularly quick in the race compared to us. And for the strategy, race execution, tyre management, that’s another step that we want to take next year that we are already working on it. But in terms of pure performance, we are not far. We just need to put on a bit more power and a bit more downforce in the car and we’re going to be at the same level or faster. So let’s hope that we can do that”.
It was good campaign for all at Maranello but they can’t afford to let the grass grow under their feet for long. As a team they need to work on the weaknesses they encountered and if they can alleviate same, it COULD be an interesting campaign at the sharp end for the focal teams concerned.