For Italians, Ferrari isn’t just an F1 team – but a national identity, something almost everyone in the country supports wholeheartedly. As such, when expectations are not met, the Maranello-based outfit has to deal with widespread criticism from the Italian media and public, something Carlos Sainz talked about ahead of this weekend’s race in Monza.
As he geared up for his last Italian GP as a Ferrari driver, Sainz drew a comparison between Ferrari and Mercedes. “I don’t know, but… when Mercedes goes from a win to a seventh position, I see that is not a drama. If it happens to us at Ferrari, it seems like the end of the world,” the 29-year-old said.
With this, Sainz highlighted that his team has always been under more pressure than the others. What he wanted everyone to understand was that they were all on the same boat in terms of making progress.
“We are carrying forward developments that sometimes work and sometimes don’t,” he added.
Carlos Sainz: “I don’t know, but… when Mercedes goes from a win to a seventh position I see that it is not a drama, if it happens to us at Ferrari it seems like the end of the world! What I want to say is that all the teams are in the same situation, we are….”
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Sainz pointed out the results from the Dutch GP last weekend. Mercedes had won three out of the previous four races before they arrived at Zandvoort, but there, they finished P7 and P8 respectively. Neither George Russell nor Lewis Hamilton could put the W15 in contention for a podium place that afternoon. Still, there wasn’t a lot of talk around the same.
On the other hand, when Ferrari entered a slump in Spain following Charles Leclerc’s Monaco GP win, Ferrari was heavily scrutinized by the F1 community.
This weekend, Sainz and Ferrari will compete in front of the Tifosi at Monza, where the expectations are always high, regardless of the team’s overall performance in the season.
Sainz and his teammate Leclerc had a good race in the Netherlands last week, with the latter even getting a P3 finish. However, Sainz is not sure about where Ferrari ranks in the performance index. “To understand where we will be this weekend, we have to wait for tomorrow’s tests,” the Madrid-born driver concluded.
The least the Tifosi would expect is for a Ferrari driver to finish on the podium. If that doesn’t happen, the team will likely be bombarded with criticism once again.
