Formula 1 Today: Carlos Sainz Confident of Ferrari’s Competitive Edge in Austria
Ferrari Formula 1 driver Carlos Sainz is optimistic that his team will be more competitive in Austria after identifying a key car weakness that hindered their performance in Spain. Sainz and his teammate Charles Leclerc qualified on the third row in Barcelona, behind both Mercedes cars and the front-row duo of Lando Norris (McLaren) and Max Verstappen (Red Bull). Despite attempting to split tyre strategies, both Ferrari drivers struggled to overtake the Mercedes duo, ultimately finishing in the same position they started.
Sainz acknowledged that Ferrari was the fourth-fastest team in his home race, but he believes that Barcelona’s layout exposed their weakness in long corners more than other circuits will. As a result, he expects Ferrari to be more competitive this weekend at the Red Bull Ring, a track that doesn’t punish their car’s weaknesses as severely.
“It was not our best weekend, but this was the track where we struggled the most last year too,” Sainz said. “So that’s our hope, that it’s just a [bad] track for us and that there will be other tracks where we will be a bit more competitive. It’s the high-speed nature of the track and the long, combined [corners], we seem to be always struggling when it’s long corners like China, here or Suzuka. I remember Austria not being an issue for track characteristics, so I think we will be more competitive because of the corner types.”
Team boss Fred Vasseur echoed Sainz’s sentiments, emphasizing that the pecking order in Barcelona does not set a trend for the remaining races before the summer break. With the tight margins between the top four teams, Vasseur believes that bigger fluctuations are likely to occur than in previous years.
“The order is changing because in the last four weekends you have four different teams doing pole position,” he said. “We didn’t change the car massively, which means it is more relative to the track layout, to the compounds, to being in the temperature window. Before drawing conclusions, we have to stay calm, we have to go event by event and [in Austria] it will be a completely different format, different Tarmac, different type of corners also and probably the picture will be completely different next week. Nothing is forever in Formula 1 today, and it means it is not crystal clear that one team is better than the other.”
Vasseur pointed out that Ferrari fell short in Barcelona qualifying, particularly in finding the optimal tyre window throughout a single lap. “The most important thing in Barcelona is to keep the potential of the tyres all over the lap in different corners,” he explained. “Probably we missed something on this because we were two tenths off. But with 14 corners in Barcelona, we are not losing one hundredth per corner. We lost two times one tenth per lap and the rest of the lap was a copy-paste of Lando.”
As the teams head to Austria, Ferrari is determined to bounce back from their disappointing performance in Spain. With their Formula 1 tyres and overall pace expected to be more competitive at the Red Bull Ring, Sainz and Leclerc will be pushing hard to climb the Formula 1 standings. Stay tuned for the latest Formula 1 news and updates from the Austrian Grand Prix.
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