Sainz admits Red Bull surprised Ferrari in ‘frustrating’ F1 season

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Carlos Sainz admits that Ferrari have endured a ‘frustrating’ F1 season so far and that the Italian team could struggle to overturn their surprisingly huge deficit to Red Bull.

The Scuderia started the year with aims of possibly challenging Red Bull for the driver’s and constructor’s championships. Ferrari have not won a driver’s title since Kimi Raikkonen took the 2007 title. While the Maranello outfit also sealed their last constructor’s crown in 2008.

Red Bull enjoyed a clean sweep of the titles last year as Max Verstappen became a two-time Formula 1 champion. The 25-year-old defended his 2021 title with a 146-point margin ahead of Charles Leclerc in second. Red Bull also beat Ferrari by 205 points to take the team’s title.

Ferrari have endured a ‘frustrating’ Formula 1 season in 2023

Ferrari firmly emerged as Red Bull’s closest rival following F1 overhauling the regulations to introduce ground-effect cars. Leclerc won two of the first three races with the Bahrain Grand Prix and Australian GP. But Leclerc only won again in Austria, while Sainz won the British GP.

Yet having shown promise in 2022 before the wheels fell off the wagon, Ferrari sought to go again in 2023. But the Prancing Horse has yet to come home in P1 during the first 12 Grands Prix of the year. Red Bull, on the other hand, have won each race with Verstappen first in 10.

Ferrari have further only finished on the podium three times in 2023 with Leclerc sealing P3 at the Azerbaijan GP and Belgian GP, plus P2 in Austria. While Sainz’s best result came in the season-opening Bahrain GP when the Spaniard drove over the line in P4 and Leclerc retired.

Sainz finished the Bahrain GP a huge 48 seconds to race-winner, Verstappen. He also came home 36 seconds behind the leader in Saudi Arabia, 45 seconds in Azerbaijan, 42 seconds in Miami, 63 seconds in Monaco, 46 seconds in Spain and a massive 77 seconds in Hungary.

Carlos Sainz admits Red Bull’s dominance caught the Scuderia out

The 28-year-old now admits that Ferrari never expected to lag so far behind Red Bull ahead of the season. So, for the Scuderia to struggle so much has frustrated the Italian team. Sainz also now believes Ferrari must celebrate whatever result they can take, even if it is just P5.

“It’s been, obviously, relatively a frustrating start,” Sainz conceded, via quotes by F1i.com. “I think we all expected the car to be more competitive, ourselves to be more competitive and the field has got really, really tight.

“Then we kind of realised that Red Bull was such a big step ahead of us and it was going to be difficult to challenge them. Now, you’re going through these massive up and downs where some weekends you might be fighting for P3 and others, you’re just finishing P8.

“In performance swing means you might just be 0.1s in front missing or 0.1s behind that tight field, which is not a lot. But the end result looks very different in Ferrari when you come back with a P3 or P8.

“Now, we just need to kind of accept that’s the fight that we are in. If one weekend we need to go and fight for P5 and that’s the maximum we can do, we need to celebrate the fact that we’ve done the maximum with what we have.”