Carlos Sainz Reflects on His Most “Demanding” Season Despite 2015 Confrontation With “Mad” Max Verstappen: “I Found Myself In a Position…”

Ferrari started the season on a high note with 2 wins in the first 3 races. As the year progressed, the Prancing Horse ran out of steam while Red Bull excelled. The entire campaign was, however, a disappointing constant for Carlos Sainz.

After a strong start to the season, Ferrari struggled with reliability issues and faulty strategy calls. Even Charles Leclerc, who at one point was 46 points ahead of eventual champion Max Verstappen, ended up in the runner-up spot with a giant gulf of points between him and the Dutchman. His teammate Carlos Sainz, however, could never challenge for the top spot.

Carlos Sainz rates the 2022 season among his toughest

Carlos Sainz struggled to adjust to the car throughout the season on top of having some unlucky outings. Owing to some failures in the car and some crashes, the Spaniard DNF’d 6 times. While he managed podium finished several times, the top finish came only once at Silverstone.

He recently reflected on the forgettable season. Formula1.com quoted him, saying, “I had tougher and easier years, but never such a challenging year as 2022.”

He compared the recently concluded season with his 2015 campaign when he had 7 DNFs and scored much lower points than his Toro Rosso teammate “Mad” Max Verstappen.

“I found myself in a position where I was driving with this car, I was constantly off the pace in the first five, six races, and I had to fight a lot to change some things in my driving, some things on the car, try to get the car a bit closer to my liking.” 

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Despite a tough year, Carlos has found the silver lining. The Spaniard believes he learned a lot, even more than in his rookie season in F1.

Carlos Sainz lists out the positives from the tough 2022 campaign

Carlos Sainz, while reflecting on the season gone by, talked about how he had to forget his instincts and muscle memory to adapt to the car. He also admitted how he was proud of himself for how he recovered despite several DNFs.

He told Formula 1, “I’m honestly very proud, the way that I recovered the season, the way that I managed to stay motivated, even with all the ups and downs that I had, with all the setbacks that we had.”

“As a team, as an individual, with so many DNFs, we still managed to turn the season around and now I’m driving again at the level that I know I’m able to drive. I’m going to take the positives and keep that as a positive.”

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Will Sainz get his mojo back in 2023 and be able to challenge for more race wins?