Carlos Sainz and the lesson of Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc at Silverstone

When a pattern repeats itself, it stops being luck and you have to start talking about facts, work and knowledge. And in Silverstone, Carlos Sainz once again shined in the delicate conditions thanks to his decisions at key momentssomething that has been repeated since it landed Ferrari and that was contrary to his partner’s doubts Charles Leclerc or your great friend Lando Norris at the British event.

Carlos Sainz was able to leave Silverstone with the highest loot possible for the car he had, a 5th place with a Ferrari who suffered again throughout the weekend in fast corners, as happened in Austria and Barcelona. The Madrid native maximized his result by knowing exactly when to push and when to stop in the pits to change tires.

Carlos was able to reduce the difference to those above clearly as soon as the first drops started to fall. And in very delicate conditions, with dry tires on a wet track, he showed great speed and made a difference in his hands, even getting behind the wheel of Verstappen. However, his car is not fast in the dry nor on intermediate tires.

The secret is in Libres and the radar

But without a doubt, his fascination with details and his meticulous work have again been decisive, important elements in the race in this case to know what decision to make together with his engineers in relation to the exact moment to stop to put in intermediate. wheel and return to put the dry ones. The Spaniard emphasized that it is important to study and analyze in Free Practice 1 and Free Practice 2 the behavior of the tires at every moment on the track while monitoring the rain on the radar. and the asphalt conditions so Establish a pattern and understand when to put intermediate and dry tires and at what time.

“What I sincerely believe is that never being faster than the leaders, we were able to fight that was not ours. And every moment, thanks to Free Practice 1 and Free Practice 2, radar study with my engineers and learning the track all the time where we had to go right all the time and that gave us the opportunity to be in positions we probably shouldn’t have been.”commented Carlos Sainz after the race.

Carlos Sainz was absolutely right by putting the intermediate tire on the perfect lap, just like Verstappen. Although it is true that he put the dry rubber one lap later than Piastri, something that ultimately cost him a position that he would still lose because he only had soft tires left and the McLaren with more speed.

The comparison with Norris

Comparisons to Lando Norris or Charles Leclerc are inevitable. If both want to fight for titles in the future, they need to improve their reading of races and the Briton needs to polish off a lot of mistakes.

The British driver wants to fight for victories and titles and now that he has one of the best cars, surpassing Red Bull in the last races, he is making too many mistakes with his team. One of them was choosing the wrong tire in his final and decisive stop at the British GP.

McLaren has a new, soft medium tire. Lewis Hamilton stopped at the previous turn and put on the soft, while Verstappen put on the hard. His engineers question him and Lando doesn’t know what to do, finally pointing out the tender because Lewis put it in, though finally saying he doesn’t care. McLaren engineers should not have put him in such a predicament and should have made a decision for the driver, but if Lando Norris had checked the compounds in Free Practice and arrived at the race with his homework done, even she would be beautiful reading the conditions and the tires and I can win with the right choice.

On the medium tyre, his teammate Piastri showed good speed which explained that Lando might have won. To make matters worse, in that pit stop, Lando Norris overbraked by a meter and this caused him to lose valuable time for Hamilton to overtake him.

Leclerc gambled and made a mistake

Charles Leclerc changed his track engineer, but things didn’t change much since then for him. Charles and his engineers didn’t make the right decision at Silverstone either and this is not the first time Charles is less forceful in strategic decisions compared to Carlos Sainz in delicate conditionsas happened in Monaco 2022, for example.

This weekend was conditioned by his poor classification, which started him from the 11th position, with a greater need to take risks. However, his good start and the positions he got from the start allowed him to minimize that risk. And even so, unlike Carlos’s masterful approach, the Monegasque is a horror.

Leclerc entered the pits to set up the intermediates too early while Sainz stayed on track with dry tires at high speed. The rain didn’t stop and the Monegasque’s intermediate tires were destroyed.

Another important example of the importance of reading the driver is that given by Hamilton, contrary to Leclerc. Lewis was told on the radio that “we think it’s time to put in the intermissions.” His response was emphatic: “No, it’s dry in many places.” If you disagree with the approach because you read it differently, you should say so, and that’s what Lewis did.

“I had a good start, but it was a very wrong decision. Everything went wrong with the decision we made to switch from smooth tires to intermediate tires after the first stint. The messages and information suggested I think it might be the right choice.” .

“It was raining hard at turn 15, I said that on the last lap with dry tires it was raining hard, so I tried to anticipate the stop, but the rain appeared 8-9 laps later. Obviously that was the end of our race, because that time was enough to destroy my tires and we had to make another pit stop. It’s disappointing, another weekend to forget that is starting to be a lot,” said Charles, with bigger doubt than Carlos. Sainz, a point where he Monegasque must take a step forward for the future: it must improve in reading the race and making key decisions in moments of doubt on the part of the engineers, as Carlos did in the lead for that matter Monaco 2022 or Silverstone 2022, with the famous “stop inventing.”

“The call was aggressive and from the information I have it seems correct, but the truth is we were the only car that stopped to change tires at that moment and threw the race away. I have to see if we made a decision which is better,” he concluded.