‘One of the most impressive things I’ve seen as a racing driver’ – Sainz praises Ferrari form

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz has been full of praise for his team after their upturn of form following the French Grand Prix.

June’s race at Paul Ricard was possibly the lowest point on what has been a solid year so far for Ferrari.

The result was one to forget with Sainz finishing 11th and teammate Charles Leclerc ending up 16th, with both falling down the order due to tyre problems.

But Sainz has praised Ferrari’s work ethic and determination to find and solve the issues.

“Well, there’s been a lot of emphasis and focus put on this [tyre] issue,” Sainz told f1.com.

“The fallback in Paul Ricard was so dramatic in a way because we were all so surprised and said: ‘OK, we need to change this, and we need to tackle this as aggressive and as soon as we can’.

“The minute that happened, we all flew back to Maranello, we put together a few meetings, a few analysis and it was two, nearly three days intense work in the simulator, in simulations, in understanding our car to see what was the issue in our car to cause this huge problem.

“The way that the team reacted to that, was quite impressive in a way that – to see such a big team, such a big boat going to tackle in one direction all pushing in the same way to this problem.

“And seeing how many theories, how many projects came up to try and solve it was one of the most impressive feelings I’ve got as a racing driver, just to see such a big organisation tackling one certain issue.”

Both drivers commented after France just how hard the SF21 was on its tyres, explaining that the performance of the rubber would drop off quickly.

But before the summer break Ferrari were on red-hot form with Leclerc finishing second at Silverstone and Sainz adding to his podium earlier in the season at Monaco with a third-place finish in Budapest.

The Spaniard praised the team’s engineers for their contribution to the recent success.

“I enjoyed it a lot, and it was a good process,” he added.

“As drivers obviously we cannot do much more than give precise feedback, precise detail of what we feel in the car, how we feel the tyres are being affected by our driving, about the balance we have and let the engineers take care of the rest. It was good fun and I enjoyed it a lot.”

Image credits: f1.com