Sainz: I sat down with my engineers in the summer break

Jad Mallak 1 min read

Sainz: I sat down with my engineers in the summer break

Carlos Sainz came back after the Formula 1 summer break, all guns blazing, and revealed he had a meeting with his Ferrari engineers to see how to improve, which clearly paid off.

Ever since Sainz came back from the F1 summer break, he has been on form, giving teammate Charles Leclerc a run for his money, especially in qualifying, an area the Monegasque is known to be quite good in.

The Spaniard bagged two poles in Monza and Singapore in succession, and while he failed to win Ferrari’s home race despite a respectable performance, he got the job done in Singapore, ending Red Bull’s and Max Verstappen’s streak, while ending the Scuderia’s victory drought.

Facing the media after winning last Sunday in Singapore, Sainz was asked about the turnaround he achieved following the summer break.

He said: “I think in terms of car and driving understanding, I think before the summer break there was this already decent feeling with everything.

“I just sat down with my engineers in the summer break,” he revealed, “and we said okay, what can we do to start putting the whole weekend together, because clearly we have a lot of pace, we were doing some good things but we are never putting the whole thing together, so let’s see what we can do to improve that and start having consistent performances in the second half, because the potential is clearly there this year.

“And yeah, Zandvoort was a very good weekend, Monza was almost perfect and here [Singapore] I feel like it was the perfect one. Makes me very happy and proud that when you work, you analyse, and you also have the speed like I’ve had the this weekend.

“It is it is always paying off and now we managed to put everything together and, yeah, very happy for the engineers, for the mechanics, the team, everyone,” Sainz concluded.

Following his win in Singapore, Sainz is fifth in the 2023 F1 Drivers’ Standings, 19 points ahead of Leclerc who sixth, and 28 points behind Fernando Alonso who is fourth.