INSIGHT: Has F1's fastest nomad finally found a home?

When it comes to the 2023 suburbanite market ‘silly season’, there’s one top team with a vacancy that will not be part of the rumor-mongering and uncertainty. While Ferrari and Carlos Sainz Jr have yet to formalize that they will protract together vastitude next year, it is inconceivable that either will squint elsewhere.

After all, why would they? Team principal Mattia Binotto said without the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that they would sit lanugo over the winter “to start discussing what our future can be”. Keeping hold of Sainz, who has integrated with the team so powerfully this year, is a no-brainer for Ferrari. The only real question is likely to be exactly how long Ferrari wants to commit to Sainz, who was initially confirmed only for two years without moving to the team from McLaren superiority of 2020.

As for Sainz, when he joked in a recent printing priming that he’s trying to work his way through driving for every F1 team, it reflected the fact Ferrari was his fourth employer in seven years. That’s unusually nomadic for a modern F1 driver, particularly one of Sainz’s quality, who has made his way from Toro Rosso to Renault (on loan from Red Bull) to McLaren and then Maranello since making his grand prix debut in 2015. But given he walked yonder from a McLaren team where he was very well-established to take on the Ferrari challenge, and has thrived, Sainz will be eager to secure a longer-term Ferrari future.

Yet for all that, Sainz hasn’t proved to be the suburbanite Ferrari thought it had secured when they put pen to paper to recruit him. The deal was washed-up superiority of the elapsed start to the 2020 season at a point where Ferrari had decided to manipulate with the services of Sebastian Vettel when his contract terminated at the end of the year. With Charles Leclerc having signed a five-year deal the previous year to alimony him at Ferrari until the end of 2024, he was tint as the future of Ferrari with Sainz viewed as a good number two. Ferrari, of course, never explicitly intimated that, but reading between the lines of what Binotto had said well-nigh the partnership, it was well-spoken Leclerc was seen as the star and Sainz as the wingman.

But plane surpassing Sainz walked through the Maranello gates, Ferrari started to realize it was getting increasingly than it bargained for by signing the Spaniard. He had a strong 2020 wayfarers with McLaren; Ferrari particularly noting how much his qualifying had improved. That’s symptomatic of an intelligent, diligent competitor with a momentum to modernize himself continually – weft traits that come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the career and weft of his two-times world rally champion father, Carlos Sr.

When Sainz made the move from Toro Rosso to Renault, which happened four races surpassing the conclusion of the 2017 superiority of a full year in ’18, it didn’t go as hoped. Having headed into ’18 expecting either to secure a longer-term deal at Renault or a return to Red Bull, he found both doors latter and made the move to McLaren for ’19. His full season with Renault in ’18 was his least inveigling in F1 considering his wits at the time, but was a vital learning opportunity. Given how specialized modern F1 cars are, learning and mastering the unsolved variety of team-specific settings and how to make the most of the misogynist tools such as unequal maps and restriction shapes is a long process. The scale of that rencontre unprotected Sainz by surprise, but he’s not one to make the same mistake a second time.

That’s why when he moved to McLaren he put in a huge value of work at its Woking headquarters, preparing, learning and ensuring that he had undivided as much as he could surpassing the start of the season. He took a similar tideway when he moved to Ferrari, which proved increasingly challenging given the restrictions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, that has paid dividends. As well as mileage in a 2018-specification Ferrari and the driver-in-loop simulator, Sainz devoted a huge value of time to integration with personnel at the factory. Given the scale of the challenge, it unliable him to hit the ground at the start of the season if not running, then at least jogging.

Sainz, of course, came into 2021 focused on attempting to usurp Leclerc as the team’s lead driver. Again, that objective was not publicly stated – he’s too sharp to do that – but by rhadamanthine the perfect team player and delivering on track to a slightly higher standard than expected when he was signed, it was a realistic aspiration.

Some would oppose that he succeeded given that his third place at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix finale meant he jumped superiority of Leclerc in the points, finishing fifth in the world championship. It was an impressive achievement, although points can sometimes be an unreliable witness and Leclerc retained a slender wholesomeness on the key performance metrics over the season.

Perhaps the most eyecatching facet of Sainz’s year was his qualifying performance. Leclerc is one of the strongest qualifiers in F1, capable of unceasingly delivering laps right on the limit, often exhibiting uncanny traction-sensing skills withal the way – an essential worthiness given that the rear tires tend to overheat over a push lap. And yet Sainz wasn’t far off – just over 0.1% on average. What’s more, he outpaced Leclerc in qualifying in six of the last eight races. Plane for those valuables Sainz to thrive at Ferrari, that was surprising.

“Particularly this last six or seven races, I finger like I got the weightier out of the car in pretty much every quali,” said Sainz. “This is something I managed to do at McLaren very often, and it was a bit of a lesson to be pushed in this last third of the season.

“I’ve been up versus very strong qualifers my whole career, with Max , Lando and now Charles. I never felt I have anything to lose versus him, and I think in this last third I’m doing what I did in the McLaren and the Toro Rosso.”

It has been nonflexible work. Sainz has often been a suburbanite who is not prone to crashing, yet he did have a number of impacts during the season as he battled to get to Leclerc’s level. Although he moreover had a difficult time in the penultimate qualifying session of the season in Jeddah, spinning and brushing the wall with his rear wing endplate in Q2, he appeared to have got on top of the car by the final phase of the season. That was doubtless a result of pushing himself hard.

He moreover showed a knack for stuff particularly strong in the quicker corners, as the two Ferrari drivers often found very variegated ways to string together very similar lap times. That’s remoter vestige that, as well as learning from Leclerc’s skills, Sainz has moreover been worldly-wise to go his own way. But he knew this was going to be a challenge.

“Not straight yonder without no winter testing and the challenges you have to transmute to in the first half of the season,” said Sainz of his expectations of getting to Leclerc’s level in qualifying on Saturday evening in Abu Dhabi. “But I’m happy to see during the last third, basically I’m missing nothing in quali.

“I can put the laps together when they matter, as well. That’s why Jeddah was so painful, considering I spun when I had the pace to be hands in the top five. Today, I calmed myself down, reacted well, did a strong lap in Q2, went into Q3 and put it there .”

The races were unchangingly expected to be Sainz’s strong point and often they went well, but he only finished superiority of Leclerc six times in the 20 races they both finished – with three of those in the second half of the campaign. While Sainz did occasionally show a largest knack for tire management, particularly at front-limited tracks where Ferrari could struggle in that regard, expressly early in the year, Leclerc’s race performances were moreover very effective.

Sainz did lead the way on the podium count with four appearances, including a second place at Monaco – where he was a pole position threat surpassing Leclerc’s shunt ruined everyone’s last runs and gave him one of his two pole positions in 2021 – but often that was just lanugo to circumstances. Leclerc had six fourth places, which could hands have turned to podiums through external circumstances.

So while the points positions flattered Sainz very slightly, the trajectory of his season was superb. This will make the wrestle between the pair of them fascinating in 2022, with Sainz once roughly at equal number one level and Leclerc doubtless unswayable to reassert himself. But for all that rivalry, they have worked well together and moreover bring complementary skills to the team given they have varying strengths and weaknesses.

But what’s essential for Sainz is the impression he’s made off-track. He’s well-liked and held in upper regard, and the quality of his feedback and technical knowledge ways he’s a loud voice when it comes to set-up and car development. Leclerc had got used to stuff the focal point, but Sainz is now very well-established in that regard. Indeed, Leclerc’s scrutinizingly preternatural car tenancy ways that he does sometimes find it scrutinizingly too easy to momentum virtually limitations. That doesn’t midpoint he has no idea what the car is doing – far from it – but it is an zone where Sainz potentially has an advantage.

All of this ways that Sainz has made himself an indispensable part of the Ferrari team slantingly Leclerc. That partnership has helped Ferrari unzip its objective of third in the constructors’ championship this season, and promises much for the future.

The big test will come if and when Ferrari re-emerges as a potential title-winning force. Considering if this season has taught us anything, it’s that both Leclerc and Sainz see themselves as the suburbanite to fight for that title.

It’s tantalizingly poised for next year, and all considering Sainz has proved himself to be far increasingly than just a good all-round wingman, and a suburbanite whose knack for continually improving himself ways he goes into 2022 in as good a position as he could hope to have been without just one year at Ferrari versus Leclerc.

But there’s still flipside step to take.