Sainz says Ferrari car development has enabled better race strategy

Carlos Sainz says any impression that Ferrari has made a significant improvement this year on strategy is purely down to its stronger car, having made incremental gains in other areas.

Ferrari has maximized its race weekends so far this season, taking a one-two in Melbourne and finishing third and fourth behind Red Bull in both Bahrain and Japan. In Jeddah, Charles Leclerc was third behind the Red Bulls while Ollie Bearman finished seventh when filling in for the sidelined Sainz, but the Spaniard says the influence of the quality of a car on strategy has been underestimated.

“I think we’ve made progress on strategy over the last three years, progressively, but if you see a jump this year on strategy, it’s purely down to the car,” Sainz said. “Just having a car that allows you to have flexibility on strategy is something that last year we couldn’t have.

“So, we were boxed in to stop at certain laps. We couldn’t extend. We had so much deg that it looked always like people could extend and then come back on us on a harder tire. Last year, we were just zero flexible and we couldn’t do anything without racing. So it looked like we were not getting the strategy right a lot of times.