Carlos Sainz deserves more credit for taking the fight to Charles Leclerc, F1 pundit explains why

Carlos Sainz's second season with Ferrari has impressed veteran F1 journalist Mark Hughes. In a feature written for The Race, Mark recapped the season put together by Carlos Sainz and felt that the Spaniard deserves more credit than what he's been given this season.

Talking about Sainz, Mark feels that Ferrari's inherent oversteering nature worked in favor of Leclerc at the start of the season and hurt the Spaniard. That was why Leclerc was able to shine at the start of the season while Sainz could not.

Mark Hughes explained:

"The oversteering traits of the Ferrari F1-75, and how Leclerc immediately found a way of overlapping his throttle and braking which the car very much responded to, left Sainz initially uncomprehending. The gap which he had all-but closed completely by the end of ’21 was suddenly bigger than ever into the new season."

Another important fact that Mark Hughes touched on was Sainz closing the gap to Leclerc in the second half of the season and having a much better record in qualifying. He said:

"Taking out all the wet qualifying sessions and those where a fair comparison cannot be made (usually because one of them was taking an engine penalty), Leclerc outqualified Sainz 10-3 by an average of 0.1521% (which translates to 0.126s relative to the average dry pole position lap of 1m22.737s ). Last year Leclerc was ahead 10-5 in qualifying by an average of 0.1433% (translating to 0.113s)."

Hughes added:

"If we dig a little deeper into the Leclerc-Sainz qualifying match-up, there were 13 races in which a fair comparison could be made. Taking the first seven of them and comparing them to the latter six, we can see quite clearly how significantly Sainz turned things around"

All in all, the improvement from Carlos Sainz over the course of the season was what caught the eye of Hughes as he felt that the gap between the two Ferrari drivers is not precisely what we tend to see in a no.1 and no.2 driver dynamic.

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SK's verdict on Carlos Sainz's 2022 F1 season

It was a solid season for Carlos Sainz, especially after the kind of start he had. He was able to recover most of the gap he had to Leclerc, and it was quite evident in the race in Mexico where Sainz was the quicker Ferrari driver.

Having said that, when it comes to the peaks of the drivers and how the two fare, it is visible that Carlos Sainz finds it hard to keep up with Charles Leclerc. Lest we forget, even his first-ever win in F1 was a result of Ferrari's disastrous strategy of compromising Leclerc's race.

Carlos Sainz is a strong deputy for Leclerc but not a challenger, and this is something that Ferrari needs to realize heading into the 2023 F1 season.