Carlos Sainz opens up on Ferrari’s prospects of defeating Red Bull and Mercedes in 2023

29/11/2022 10:18

It’s been two solid years for Carlos Sainz at Scuderia Ferrari, despite the fact that the Spaniard started the 2022 Formula 1 season with some difficulties, as he struggled to adapt his driving style to the Maranello team’s F1-75 car, making a few avoidable mistakes on his way to a much solid second part of the year.

Carlos Sainz now looks ahead to the next season and points out that Scuderia Ferrari need a “perfect” championship as they attempt to come back stronger and challenge Red Bull and Mercedes for both titles in 2023.

The Italian side started the 2022 F1 season with high hopes, as during the previous year, Ferrari was already focusing on the introduction of the new rules and regulation for the ground-effect cars. And it seemed it would finally be the Maranello team’s year, as Ferrari impressed in the pre-season testing sessions and then secured two race wins in the first three rounds, thanks to Charles Leclerc, with Carlos Sainz also scoring two podium finishes.

Yet the Maranello team was not able to build on that momentum and gradually lost ground as the season progressed, due to a combination of on-track errors, poor engine reliability and wrong strategy decisions from the pitwall making things easy for Red Bull, who won both the Drivers and Constructors’ championships. Ferrari finished more than 200 points behind the Austrian side and even had to battle Mercedes in the last races of the season to defend its second position.

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As first was at least able to design a competitive car in 2022 and start the season strong, after several very difficult F1 campaigns spent mainly outside the fight for podiums, Carlos Sainz feels that the Scuderia must now execute a “perfect” operation in 2023.

“Clearly this year, it wasn’t [possible to fight for the title], because I’m very far from him [title-winner Max Verstappen] in the Championship. The way that he has performed in combination with Red Bull, they’ve been just the faster package: the quicker car; the quicker driver. I do feel like with a perfect year, it should be possible but we will need to be perfect next year. And we will need to improve the car. I will need to improve, especially in the first half of the season and in the races. So that is the target – and you need to put high targets to yourself and onto the team like this. You can try and accomplish them. And then let’s see what life brings next year to the table.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz explained, at the end of a season in which he scored his first Formula 1 win, at the Silverstone circuit in the British Grand Prix.

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