Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
Carlos Sainz says he still expects Ferrari’s competitiveness each weekend to vary depending on the circuit, despite the team producing a strong performance in Canada.
After a run of poor races, the Ferrari looked very strong on Friday at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and made Red Bull wonder if the Canadian Grand Prix was going to be a break in the chain of their winning streak.
However, another poor qualifying with indecision from the strategists, Sainz only qualified in P8, but was relegated to P11 after his penalty for blocking Gasly during Q1. Sainz’s Monegasque teammate Charles Leclerc was once again frustrated with his team seeing him fail to make it into Q3.
Nonetheless, Ferrari recovered well on Sunday to finish in P4 and P5. Their strategy was called into question during the race and many thought it was going to be another Ferrari poor decision not to pit under the safety car. However this call by Ferrari proved to be right and they managed to pit later and retain their positions.
“Yeah a bit upbeat coming from a tough quali yesterday,” Sainz stated after the race.
“We clearly this weekend had more pace than where we qualified. It felt like we would’ve had fun there at the front if we had started a bit more up front. But yeah, solid pace, solid strategy also. We managed to bring home fourth and fifth. So yeah, our bad for not making it better in quali. Obviously, the penalty didn’t help either. But at least we have some positives to look forward.”
The Ferrari this year has struggled to maintain life in their Pirelli tyres during the race, but with Canada having a lot of slow speed corners and low tyre degradation, Sainz admits things may have just suited their SF-23 last weekend in Montreal.
“I said it, no, after Barcelona, I knew Barcelona was not a good track for us,” he said.
“I knew Canada was going to be a better track. It was confirmed on Friday pace already and today we just confirmed that lower deg circuit, also slower speed corners which we know we are stronger at. Today we could show a bit more of our true pace, let’s see how are the higher-speed circuits going back to Austria and Silverstone next.”
With the Red Bull Ring, Silverstone and Spa all having high-speed corners, the Spaniard is not expecting the strong showing in Canada to be a consistent theme.
“Yeah I think our pace in Austria will also depend also in the characteristics of the circuit. I think our pace varies a lot depending on that.
“We’ve seen places like Monaco are stronger than places with higher speed corners like Barcelona, we struggle a bit more.
“I think we will see variance in our competitiveness,” concluded Sainz.
