Carlos Sainz - Ferrari fightback “most impressive” feelings ever

Ferrari

Sainz - Ferrari fightback “most impressive” feelings ever

Ferrari solved an 'unsolvable' issue after French GP disaster

Will Gray

Sunday 8 August 2021 15:12

Carlos Sainz has hailed his Ferrari team’s determined fight to uncover the reasons behind its devastating drop in form at the French Grand Prix earlier this year as “one of the most impressive feelings” he has had in his career.

Ferrari has returned to form this season but struggled with its tyres at the Paul Ricard track, leaving team principal Mattia Binotto fearing an impossible fundamental problem with the car that the team would not be able to overcome.

That has proved not to be the case, however, thanks to a combined effort to find the fault and Sainz said: “There has been a lot of emphasis and focus put on this issue because the fall back at Paul Ricard was so dramatic.

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“We were all so surprised that we needed to change this and tackle this as aggressively and as soon as we could, and the minute that happened we all flew back to Maranello.

“We put together a few meetings, a few analyses, and it was at least three days of intense work in the simulator, in simulations, in understanding our car to see what was the issue in the car causing this huge problem.

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

Sainz in awe of engineering talent

Ferrari is one of the mightiest teams on the grid, with large numbers of highly skilled engineers, and it took the whole team to work together to find a way to stop the front tyres overheating and graining to pieces.

Sainz played a part in the brainstorming of ideas and he added: “Seeing how many theories, how many different projects came up to try to solve it was one of the most impressive feelings I got as a racing driver.

“Drivers, honestly, we cannot do much more than give precise feedback and detail of what we feel in the car and how we feel like the tyres are being affected by our driving and the balance that we have.

“The engineers take care of the rest. Just to see such a big organisation tackling a certain issue. I enjoyed it a lot, it was a good process.”