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Carlos Sainz believes the Marina Bay circuit was not a physical challenge for him, but he lacked confidence in the pace during the race. The Spaniard also said he will have to figure out why the mixed grip level conditions did not work for him at the 2022 F1 Singapore GP.
Asked by Sportskeeda in the post-race press conference if the physicality of the circuit and intermittent conditions posed a challenge in the race, the Ferrari driver replied:
“No, no especially on the wet, I don’t feel like the track is physical at all. It’s usually warm in the car but this is not a problem because the physicality of it is much lower. It was just a matter of pure, pure pace and confidence. I think here confidence is key and when you have a couple of moments, it snowballs and then you have to take a bit more margin and then you start losing extra pace compared to other tracks because next time around, you might be in the wall and you might look like an idiot, no?”
“So it’s a confidence thing that I will work on. I will have a good look with my engineers to see what I could have done better, what we can do in these sort of conditions because as you said, is one of my strongest points as a driver. And I think it’s going to be only a one-off.”
Carlos Sainz was asked about the reasons behind his lack of pace at the 2022 F1 Singapore GP, where the mixed grip level conditions were expected to be his forte. Responding to the question, the Spaniard assured that his lack of pace in such conditions in Singapore won't be repeated in the future. The Ferrari driver, however, felt he lacked pace and was unable to perform as confidently as he expected. Unable to understand the drop in pace, Sainz claimed he needed to work with his engineers and garage to investigate the performance loss.
Carlos Sainz believes tires made him lose confidence
Carlos Sainz claimed he lost confidence during the 2022 F1 Singapore GP after finding it difficult to keep up with teammate Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez ahead of him. Finishing third in the end, the Ferrari driver drove a lone race which he believes was due to the tires. He cited his inability to extract performance from the intermediate tires as the reason for his loss of confidence during the race.
Describing his lone race around the Marina Bay circuit, Carlos Sainz said:
“Yeah, it was unfortunately quite lonely for me because I just didn’t have the pace. Today on the intermediate tyre, I lost a lot on the road to Charles and Checo. I couldn’t keep up with him. I was struggling quite a lot on these tyres. I think I lost quite a bit (in) the front and I was having a lot of moments, a lot of front locks, and every moment here costs you confidence and costs you the ability to recover that pace. Yeah, at one point I had to settle a bit and recover that confidence because I couldn’t keep up. And once the confidence recovered in the slick and towards the last 10-15 laps, I managed to be quick but it was just way too late.”
The Ferrari driver has managed to recover points with his recent top-five performances. He is, however, still trailing in fourth place in the drivers' championship behind George Russell, who has had a consistent top-five streak until Singapore in an inferior Mercedes. Carlos Sainz will now have to consistently maintain a podium streak to be able to challenge Sergio Perez for third place in the championship.
