Sainz no longer fears he will ‘lose the car’

Carlos Sainz says he can finally push flat-out “without any fear of losing the car”, a problem he had earlier this season.

Sainz has taken a bit longer than his team-mate Charles Leclerc to adapt to this year’s new technical regulations and Ferrari’s interpretation thereof in the F1-75.

That led to a spate of crashes, four in three races although his accident on the opening lap of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was not his fault, the Spaniard hit by Daniel Ricciardo.

But even then it could be argued that Sainz’s positioning at the start of the grand prix, P10 in qualifying from which he could only recover as high as P4 in sprint qualifying, was the result of his crash in Q2.

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In the last three races, though, he has bagged two runner-up results, the second of which was the closest he has ever come to winning a grand prix.

He crossed the line at the Canadian Grand Prix just 0.993s behind race winner Max Verstappen.

Sainz puts that down to now feeling confident is the car from the very start of the race weekends.