Sainz 'confused' as pre-season pace vanishes

Mar.24 (GMM) Carlos Sainz is leaving Shanghai scratching his head about “one of the strangest drops in performance I’ve had in my career”.

Having lost his Ferrari race seat and accepted a backwards step down the grid, the 30-year-old Spaniard actually impressed in his new Williams early on.

He crashed in the opening moments of the treacherous season opener in Australia, and so Shanghai sprint and main races ultimately came as a big shock to Sainz.

“I’m a bit confused,” the four-time grand prix winner told DAZN.

“I was very fast in the (2024) Abu Dhabi tests, I was very fast in Bahrain, and for some reason, all the pace I had in the tests has vanished in one fell swoop in this first real race with the team,” Sainz said in China on Sunday.

“There is a lot to analyse and we need these ten days to analyse everything calmly to see what we can do better,” he added, referring to the short gap now separating Shanghai from the opening of proceedings at Suzuka.

“Ten days are enough, I’m sure we’ll find something and come back stronger. But here, we’ve been going very slowly,” Sainz admitted.

Worse still for Sainz, teammate Alex Albon is not having his specific problems.

“From yesterday (Saturday) to today, we changed the setup of both cars a lot, and it worked for Alex and he was able to finish in the points,” said the Spaniard. “For me, I continued to struggle a lot with the front graining, opening up the tyres a lot on both the medium and hard tyres, and I haven’t been going fast, so there’s a lot to analyse.

“This was my first real test with the car, and clearly it didn’t work out.”

He tipped Williams to find a quick solution, noting that while Haas officials were downbeat about a “fundamental” problem with their car after Australia, “suddenly, a bit like last year, they seem to have improved a lot”.

Haas recruit Esteban Ocon confirmed how suddenly the small American team found the solution to its alarming earlier problem.

“Everyone is happy,” he told Canal Plus. “We managed to turn the situation around in a week. It shows that we know where we’re going.”