“I like those kinds of challenges”- Carlos Sainz relishes challenge of limited test time

“I like those kinds of challenges”- Carlos Sainz relishes challenge posed by limited test time ahead of the 2021 calendar proposed by Formula 1.

Ferrari has found a replacement of Sebastian Vettel in Carlos Sainz. Still, the Spaniard will have little time to fill in his predecessor’s shoes and adjust to the cars, as the season will start in less than 100 days and the testing session because of it has been cropped to only three days.

Instead of worrying about the ordeal and mounted pressure to do well at Ferrari, Sainz is enjoying the challenges posed in front of him of adjusting to the car within the short window of Bahrain tests.

“I know that I’m going to arrive at Ferrari, and I’m going to need my races and my experiences to get to know how to extract the maximum out of that car,” Sainz told Motorsport.com.

“If you add that it looks like I’m going to get one-and-a-half days of testing, and I’m going to go straight into my first race with only one day and a half of testing in a brand new car.

“For me, it’s going to be a tough thing to do. But I like those kinds of challenges. I’ll try and adapt myself as well as possible, and as best I can, and see what I can get out of it.”

The pressure is always high at Ferrari says, Sainz.

Validating his statement, Sainz later explained that he could not hide behind the obstacles in front of him, meanwhile also talked about the maturity a driver achieves while representing a big team over time.

“Pressure in Ferrari is always high,” Sainz said. “It doesn’t matter about the number of years on the contract, and I’m the first one that is wanting to be as fast as possible out of the box.

“But for me, a two-year deal is important. It’s one of the things that I’ve always said since I joined McLaren and obviously since joining Ferrari, for a driver to have a bit of stability in a team is always important.”

“I feel like in McLaren in my second year, and I extracted a lot more out of the car than my first year. And if you see people like Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault, you can clearly see how important it is to take a bit of time to know the car.”

“You see the Charles Leclerc of today versus the Charles Leclerc of a year-and-a-half ago when he joined Ferrari, he’s a different Charles. If you see the Lewis [Hamilton] of today compared to the Lewis of 2013 when he joined Mercedes, he’s different.”

“You know a lot better how to extract the performance of the car.”

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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