‘I know how fast I am,’ Carlos Sainz thinks people ‘sometimes don’t perceive’ his speed because he doesn’t like to talk about it
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Carlos Sainz
By his own admission, Carlos Sainz has had a ‘nightmare’ of a season. Generally, he hasn’t been as fast as his teammate, Charles Leclerc, but one could say that he’s also been more unfortunate, as he has been taken out of the race at the start on two occasions now, once in Imola, and more recently in Austin. In Japan as well, where he ‘aquaplaned’.
But he’s also been subject to a fair bit of criticism on social media for apparently being ‘arrogant’ in interviews, something that he recognizes, and beats himself up for. Speaking to BBC Sport, the Spaniard commented: “Every time I do an interview and say my positives and I read them, I say: ‘Ah, this sounds super-arrogant.’ Maybe I go more towards the humble too much and stay in that way – modest. But whenever I see something a bit arrogant, I kill myself for it.”
Sainz doesn’t like talking about his strengths unless brought up by the interviewee. He also says: “A lot of people… sometimes they don’t perceive my speed. And I know how fast I am; I just don’t like talking about it. I don’t give it value, because if I know in myself and my engineers and the people I work with know it, I don’t need more people to know it.”
He makes it clear that he is not going to change this aspect of himself: “Maybe I am not doing myself any favours, but it is how I am and I am not going to change.” But he does understand that he has some work to do, particularly in his race execution, which he believes hasn’t been as strong this year as it was in the past.
Carlos Sainz has struggled with managing the new Pirelli tyres
Carlos Sainz admitted that the ‘race execution’ has been a weaker point for him in 2022, which he attributed to struggling with tyre management on the new Pirelli 18-inch tyres. But race starts is another problem: “The starts with this car, for some reason, have been extremely difficult and we have an inherent problem that doesn’t allow us to get off the line as well as in previous years.
As he can’t control the tyre degradation as well, his strategy options are limited: “With these tyres, I don’t control as well the tyre degradation and the race pace, and it’s more difficult to be flexible, and it doesn’t open up as many strategy choices as I would like to have or as I had in the past with McLaren.”
But is pleased that the gap in qualifying to Charles Leclerc has come down quite significantly – Sainz believes Leclerc is one of, if not the fastest qualifiers on the grid, so he’s ‘proud’ that they are now closer together in that aspect.
Also Read: “My goal is to be world champion,” Carlos Sainz reiterates his goals for 2023 with Ferrari
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)