Carlos Sainz believes his third place in the Japanese Grand Prix provides a clear indication of the progress Ferrari has made over the past six months.
At last year’s race at Suzuka – held in October – Sainz finished sixth, 50 seconds behind race-winner Max Verstappen, while teammate Charles Leclerc was a further 44s off in fourth place. This time around, Sainz picked up another podium and was just under 21s away from Verstappen, with Leclerc close behind, and the Spaniard says it proves where Ferrari has been able to strengthen.
“It’s very satisfying,” Sainz said. “We exactly improved the car in the places that we wanted to improve it, and Suzuka proves it. Still, places like Suzuka, we are not as quick as the Red Bull, which is the target, but as soon as we bring a good upgrade to the car that goes in the right direction, hopefully it can get us closer.
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“But yeah, we’ve improved everywhere, and especially in the race pace. It also allows us to have more strategic flexibility, that last year we didn’t have. It allows me to go forward in the races and instead of looking in my mirrors all the time to offset myself with strategy and then overtake people, which is something that last year wasn’t on the cards at any point. So, I’m happy and it makes me enjoy racing more.”
Despite those positive signs that Ferrari is moving in the right direction, and his victory in Melbourne, Sainz says he never had any expectations that Red Bull could be challenged at Suzuka.
“We kind of knew our race pace was better than our qualifying pace,” he said. “Still probably not enough to go for a win because obviously starting P4 and given how good the race pace of the Red Bull is, it’s almost impossible to think about a win, but I was hopeful of achieving a podium that in the end we managed to achieve, even if it was a very tough race, very strategic.
“The track condition changed a lot through the race. We went from a very sunny track that we hadn’t had all weekend to a very cloudy track. The degradation went down a lot and you could push a lot more on the tires halfway through the race.
“This changed the whole situation quite a lot. At one point, I thought the podium wasn’t possible, but then with a new hard [tire], the pace was mega and I could get back onto the podium.”