“The Lap Time Will Come”: Carlos Sainz Once Convinced Ferrari to Ditch Pace to Give Him More ‘Confidence’ With Car

Ferrari has shown great promise ever since the ground effect regulations of 2022 reshaped the grid. Their mechanical package has been strong overall, however, the final push needed to win the title has always seemed just out of reach due to factors like reliability, car balance, and tire management.

In 2024, Ferrari finished just 14 points behind McLaren, the Constructors’ Championship winners. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz secured five race victories, but their car’s performance dropped off midway through the season, hampering their chances of finishing P1.

To address this, they had to roll back their upgrade package to resolve the issue, which ultimately helped them improve.

This was the second time Ferrari found themselves in such a situation. In 2023, the team had also experienced a mid-season slump, which is when Sainz stepped in to make things better.

The Spaniard proposed to raise the car’s ride height, which was a solution many teams would outrightly dismiss, as it reduces pace and downforce on the car. But Sainz’s suggestion wasn’t without reason.

The Race’s Jonathan Noble recalled how Sainz had suggested Ferrari sacrifice some short-term pace gain at the 2023 Spanish GP to focus on the long-term stability of the car. “If we just lift the car a little bit, make it theoretically less quick but give me more confidence, the lap time will come”, Noble quoted Sainz on The Race F1 podcast.

Ferrari, under Frederic Vasseur’s leadership, agreed and it worked wonders for them. As the 2023 season unfolded, the SF-23’s porpoising (bouncing issues on the straight) disappeared and they got considerably faster in the latter stages of the campaign.

For Sainz, the cherry on the top of the cake was winning the Singapore GP, ending Max Verstappen’s dominant juggernaut of wins. He became the first and only non-Red Bull driver to win a Grand Prix in 2023.

It proved how a team can look to make amends for its car’s weaknesses by sacrificing some performance in the short term, only to recover and sustain its competitive edge in the future. Noble feels Aston Martin are also trying to do the same, having realized they were in the same boat as Ferrari, but their realization has come a bit late.

Aston Martin have a lot to fix

After the highs of 2023, when Fernando Alonso secured eight podium finishes, Aston Martin faced a harsh reality and steadily fell down the pecking order over the last 18 months. Toward the end of last season, the Silverstone outfit found itself rubbing shoulders with teams like Williams and Sauber, who finished ninth and tenth, respectively.

It’s not a situation Aston Martin aims to be in, especially given the financial, intellectual, and infrastructural resources at their disposal.

Last year, former technical director Dan Fallows admitted that Aston Martin was one of the last teams to recognize the hole they were in and their inability to identify mistakes in their upgrades and development trajectory — a problem that dates back to mid-2023.

Noble highlighted how Aston Martin’s technical team under Andy Cowell and Adrian Newey will now be working on undoing the damage of the team’s missteps over the past year and a half.

Regardless, their objective would only be to set the team up for an overhaul for the 2026 regulations, as hassling over the current car is pointless with 2025 being the last year of the current regulations cycle. In any case, Aston Martin have low hopes for its 2025 car besides using it as a test machinery to check its new hierarchy, processes, and infrastructure ahead of their ambitious 2026 overhaul.