Carlos Sainz expands on the issues faced by him at Williams in terms of shedding away the Ferrari knowledge and getting to grips with the new F1 car.
Having had a good Bahrain test and start in Australia, Sainz struggled driving the Williams car in China. He was nowhere when teammate Alexander Albon managed to score well. It highlighted a bigger problem for the Spaniard, not something extraordinary but a simple case of learning.
After years driving the Ferrari machine and immersing himself in the ways of the Italian manufacturer, Sainz has to unlearn major part of it in order to learn the ways of Williams. It looks like an easy job from the outside but it isn’t as he is finding out now going at different race tracks.
After deep analysis, he could understand the issues he has, which is not fundamental per se. It is mostly down the habits he has put down in his memory catalogue, which now he has to remove to add the new ones. He has to embed the new ways and adjust his driving style to it as he says.
It is not new to him considering the changes he has done over the years. But it remains a difficult job which will take time, anywhere between 5 to 10 races. His counterpart Lewis Hamilton doesn’t think he has to shed away the Mercedes memory as much, while adapting to life at Ferrari.
Found out what after China –
Sainz: “I was used to a certain type of car at Ferrari which made me end up driving, especially since 2022, in a very specific way to extract everything about that car. And you fall into habits in your driving that then you apply to the next car, and it might work in some corners but in other it makes you very weak. That’s probably a bit of it and then there’s also a side of set-up that can help me drive the way I like to drive, so it is probably uniting both, just putting together the corners that you think your driving style still work and we need to work on set-up and the other type of corner where you just need to completely forget about that and change driving style back to the car I a driving now.
“You still so much time or waste so much time asking your engineers where can I find this piece of data, how to open the data and then you realise between FP3 and quali, you spend half an hour still trying to understand where you can find and how you understand that data because it looks different in a team and you realise half an hour on that. It just takes time where everything is hidden, how to access everything, but this is super normal, that’s why it takes time bit of time to get used to new environment.”
Unlearn, relearn process –
Sainz: “From a driving perspective, the biggest challenge that you can have is to relearn a bit the way to approach a corner because you have a certain level of muscle memory, and especially under pressure in qualifying you tend to go back to the muscle memory the way you drive. You tend to have that headspace in free practice to change your driving style. And I remember in ’22, when I struggled a bit with the Ferrari, that I managed to be quick in practice, but then you get to qualifying and that natural instinct comes back and you just need to be very disciplined. It’s something that takes time and lot of effort from a mental and driving perspective, but it’s a challenge that I’ve always enjoyed and managed to get on top of in all my career. I’ve driven five different cars, different sets of regulations, and probably two races are still not enough to understand that.
“I enjoy it, I enjoy the challenge. The car has completely different strengths and weaknesses to the car that I used to be driving for three years and adapted for three years and the car was so quick last year, that’s more or less the point that you approach a corner in a way, expect the car to do something and then you need to completely reverse engineer and say, ‘OK, start from zero, this is not the way you approach it’. As I said, to do that in a test is pretty easy because you feel it. But when you put a new set of tyres bang on in qualifying and you keep attacking, that’s where you need to be extremely disciplined, and that’s what is always going to take a bit of time to adjust and to extract the most out of myself and the car.”
Timeline –
Sainz: “It depends how far away it is from your natural driving style, the further away, the longer that process is and depends what you consider as being 100%. If your 100% is to close your eyes and drive, you’re just naturally quick, that’s probably where the ideal place is, then it takes even more than a year to get to that point. If your 100% is just to perform at a very high level in Formula 1, which is where I want to get to as soon as possible, that for me should take less than half a year; five to 10 races.
“And that’s the way I see, the way I am expecting and targeting myself to be as soon as I get to different kinds of tracks, surfaces with the tarmacs and different levels of grip, different levels of downforce in the cars. It takes time to be at a good level but as I said before, I enjoy the challenge and its like once you find the click, it always feels good and I have always found that click, lets say ‘okay, now I am ready’ and it takes time.”
Agree with Sainz –
Hamilton: “I really don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m driving this like I drove my last car. For me, it’s just understanding, as I said, the technical side. It’s the understanding of all the tools that I have. It likes to be driven differently, but also I think there is, as I mentioned the last time we spoke, there is a general lack of understanding of what we do back there from the outside.
“Outside of that garage, I think most people completely underestimate what we actually do and when we’re talking about set-up and the changes that we’re making, all the different graphs that you’re looking at for aero through corner balance, mechanical balance, floor balance, all these different things that we’re trying to play with and finesse through the weekend.”
Here’s Alexander Albon on earthquake, Thailand GP
Here’s Victor Martins joining Williams
Here’s James Vowles clarifying chassis situation
Here’s in-depth from Carlos Sainz on his situation
