F1 | Sainz: “Encouraging comeback. In Monza fighting with the others”

Ferrari’s weekend has turned upside down in the space of 24 hours. Of course, having to settle for a podium is not the result we would expect from the Prancing Horse but, considering the trend of the Dutch weekend, with the bitter disappointment of qualifying, the third and fifth final places can make us leave Zandvoort with a smile while waiting for future updates.

The race evolved in an interesting way for the two drivers of the Reds, who at the start immediately managed to gain a position each, so much so that they returned to fifth place with Charles Leclerc and ninth with Carlos Sainz. Going forward with the race, while the Monegasque managed to maintain contact with Oscar Piastri and George Russell fighting for the podium, the Spaniard continued his comeback, passing first Fernando Alonso and then Pierre Gasly.

Undoubtedly, the time lost behind his Aston Martin compatriot and the Frenchman from Alpine had their impact because, after about ten laps, Sainz found himself about 4 seconds from the sixth place occupied by Sergio Perez, who in turn had about a second and a half of gap from Leclerc. Lap after lap, the Spaniard began to recover a few tenths, so much so that he was about 2 and a half seconds from the Mexican of Red Bull, a gap very close to what could have been the window for the undercut.

For this reason, the Milton Keynes team’s pit wall decided to call Perez into the pits to cover himself but, despite the early pit stop, in the second stint the Spaniard still managed to close the gap, then finding the decisive overtaking move. In this sense, the double pit stop carried out by Mercedes was also useful: Russell, increasingly in a tyre crisis, was in fact called into the pits just when Sainz had entered his DRS zone, effectively giving the Prancing Horse driver the opportunity to lap in clean air.

Closing the gap on Piastri at that point would have been impossible, given that with less than twenty laps to go he had already accumulated a gap of 7 seconds from the Australian. However, also taking advantage of the defense of Leclerc, who fought to bring home an unexpected podium given the trend of the weekend, the Spaniard still managed to reduce part of the margin, closing less than six seconds.

An encouraging fifth place, especially considering that, from the forecasts and simulations at Ferrari, Sainz expected to fight for seventh or eighth place: “Honestly yesterday, after qualifying, I was a bit pessimistic and a bit disappointed with how the day had gone and how the weekend had gone, but today I had the feeling that the car with a lot of fuel on board was behaving better than empty, so I felt that we could do something better than our predictions, which was to finish seventh or eighth behind the other top teams,” Sainz said.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

“I was able to pass the midfield cars quite quickly, I was in a good position with the tyres, then in the second stint we had the pace to attack Perez and Russell and then actually pass them at the end. To finish six or seven seconds off the podium from tenth place I think is a really good performance.”

According to Sainz, however, it is not a question of how the car responds to the fuel load, but rather how the tyres respond. Tyres have been a theme throughout the weekend: although degradation was actually limited, it was not always easy to keep them in the window, especially in qualifying, also because Zandvoort is a track that imposes a lot of energy on the tyres.

“It’s not something to do with the fuel on the car, but something to do with the tyres, with the window of the tyres. The way we turned them on in qualifying maybe led us to manage them better in the race, because today we were able to keep them alive and push, while the others seemed to have more problems with tyre management. In qualifying I couldn’t put more energy into the tyres and you can also see that from the gap in the first sector which is very large compared to Norris. It’s something intrinsic to the car.”

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

For Sainz, it is still an encouraging result, especially because he was disappointed after qualifying: “For me it is clear that, to evaluate a weekend, you always have to wait for the race. After yesterday’s qualifying we were all very negative, a lot of people were depressed, I was too. I was really disappointed with yesterday’s performance, but then today we saw an encouraging performance”.

“Of course McLaren is one step ahead of everyone. We managed to beat Piastri and I was recovering at the end, but McLaren is on another level and it will be difficult to beat them in Monza. But, for the rest, we will be there, everything will depend on qualifying and race pace,” the Spaniard added to Sky microphones.

Attention is focused on Monza, but also on the next events, because the hope is that with the new features we can make a step forward after the problems encountered with bouncing before the summer break. After the latest corrections, the compromises have decreased but, as confirmed by Leclerc, there is still something to unlock: “We don’t have to resort to big compromises, but a little, yes. I hope that once the updates are unlocked or the factors that generate bouncing are discovered, with this new fund, or with the new updates that we will bring soon, these problems will disappear”.