“Ferrari was not used to having the driver there so often”- Carlos Sainz on his uninvited Maranello visits

“Ferrari was not used to having the driver there so often”- Carlos Sainz talks about how Ferrari was clueless to deal with his constant presence.

Like any other driver, Carlos Sainz longed for his move to Ferrari, but before reaching Maranello, he formed his own working style by working at different places.

Which he wished to apply at Ferrari too, and one was that spending his optimum time at the team’s headquarters. But sadly, Ferrari’s staff is not used to this behaviour.

So, initially, they were clueless about keeping him involved with the normal day at Maranello, and Sainz reveals that eventually, people working there had a solution to it.

“It’s a work ethic, or a work method, that I kind of discovered at McLaren,” he told Sky F1. “I moved to the UK to try and make my adaptation to McLaren in the first year as quick as possible.

“At the beginning, Ferrari were not used to having the driver there so often and we had to find ways to keep me busy or try and say ‘what shall we do today, let’s do something and make it useful’. But then we got used to it and it’s started working really well.”

That special moment

Sainz could only get his hands on the new Ferrari SF21 in Bahrain. Still, to draw some familiarity with a Ferrari car, the team arranged a private test at Fiorano to let Sainz drive SF71H, and at that moment, he realized the magnitude of his reality.

“I’m not very good at describing my emotions and feelings, but I can tell you that you can feel how all the engineers and mechanics know it’s an important day for you, and you see the fans at the fences, they had a couple of banners supporting me,” he recalled.

“That felt incredibly special because I suddenly realised that moment was the moment I had dreamed about for 15 years. My idols of the past – Schumacher, Alonso, Vettel – they all had that first day at Fiorano – and I enjoyed it a lot.

“When I went to bed that night I could reflect a bit on it and I really enjoyed it.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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