Singapore’s victory was a masterpiece of strategy and courage.
With eighteen laps to go in the Singapore Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz sees the finish line of a perfect race, conducted impeccably by both the driver and the wall, every possible flaw filed to perfection as too few times in recent years. A surprising crossing with flat seas towards the first victory of 2023 is about to take place. Suddenly a change of strategy at Mercedes shakes things up, both black arrows decide to take advantage of a Virtual Safety Car to fit a set of new medium tires and try to make a comeback on Sainz. Both the Spaniard and Norris, who rose to second place after Russell’s pit stop, are forced to slide as gently as possible on their hard tires now torn and worn by over thirty laps covered on the lava asphalt of Singapore.
With four laps to go the pace set by Russell and Hamilton seems to mortify any possibility of resistance. The two Mercedes undermined the lead pair’s advantage by lapping over a second and a half faster, have emerged from behind Norris and threaten the Ferrari house party like unwanted guests. The men in red are thus forced to put down their confetti shooters, stretch the elastic band from under their chin, remove their pointed hats from their heads and cross their fingers in prayer, entrusting themselves to their pilot.
It is at that point that the gray square appears on the right side of the screen announcing the arrival of a radio team in the headphones. This is a communication between Carlos Sainz and his track engineer Riccardo Adami. Shortly before, when the Mercedes were preparing to hook up Norris’ rear wing, the Spaniard had asked Adami to change the focus of their interactions, to no longer communicate the gap to Russell to him, but to give priority to the one over Norris . A seemingly incomprehensible choice, considering that the Englishman from McLaren was only a second behind Sainz and seemed destined to be chewed up within a few corners by both Mercedes. The radio team square appears, as we were saying, and Adami informs the Spaniard that Norris is only eight tenths behind and will therefore be able to use DRS, the mobile rear wing used to gain an advantage on straights and facilitate overtaking. The situation becomes complicated, in addition to the Mercedes, Sainz now also has to defend himself from a possible attack from Norris, or at least so it seems.
The ultimate goal that DRS has always aimed for, the reason why it was introduced in Formula One, is to encourage overtaking and increase the amount of spectacle in a period in which the almost total absence of overtaking had depressed spectators. Carlos Sainz, however, overturned the paradigm in the Singapore Grand Prix. The response that bounces off the wall leaves Adami himself speechless: “Yeah, it’s on purpose”, “Yes, I’m doing it on purpose”. In all the laps preceding the arrival of the Mercedes, Sainz analyzed the behavior of Norris’ McLaren, with a notebook on his knees and a pen stuck above his ear, between his head and the foam of his helmet, at 280 km/ h took one hand off the steering wheel, removed the cap of the pen with his teeth and noted the strengths and weaknesses of the orange single-seater.
After a brief debate inside the helmet he concluded that, if he had maintained a gap from Norris of 8/9 tenths at the DRS detection point, he would have granted his ex-partner an advantage sufficient to allow him to fight with Russell’s Mercedes, without however endangering his first position.
A decision taken independently by the Spaniard, who demonstrated a completely new clarity and strategic ability for what until a few weeks ago was considered the second driver at Ferrari, with rumors of negotiations with Audi confirmed by Sainz Sr. who they seemed to take him further and further away from Maranello: “It was my decision, when I told Ricky he was perhaps surprised, but it was necessary if we wanted to win. I knew how far away I had to keep him (Norris), at what distance I had to get to the detection point: at eight, nine tenths he wouldn’t have passed me, but it was enough to give him the DRS so they wouldn’t overtake him. If they had passed him, they would have taken me too.”he confessed at the end of the race.
Forced to fight with Norris without success, Russell no longer found any space and succumbed to nervousness, finishing badly, ending up in the barriers on the last lap after touching the wall while braking. Carlos Sainz sought victory in the Singapore Grand Prix and took it, and it is a victory that could represent a decisive crossroads for his Formula One career.
In fact, after the summer break the Spanish Ferrari driver progressively raised the level of performance, ending up with subvert the balance of power with teammate Charles Leclerc. In this sense, the weight of the two consecutive pole positions between Monza and Singapore cannot be underestimated. Until a few weeks ago, the Monegasque was widely considered the more talented rider of the two, certainly the faster one, the one capable of always scratching something beyond the limit, of putting his best effort into it and above all of doing it in the decisive moment, which whether it was the race or Q3 in qualifying. Sainz, on the contrary, has always needed more time to find the right confidence with his car, often being slower than his teammate and apparently incapable of inspiring the fans on the few occasions offered by Ferrari in recent years.
In recent Grands Prix, however, the Spaniard has questioned his teammate’s dominance even on the flying lap in Singapore he demonstrated his growth by sublimating it, managing to promptly govern a condition of strong emotional pressure, in which even the most banal of mistakes would have taken away the victory and perhaps even the podium. In those laps in which he shortened and lengthened the elastic between his car and Norris’s at will, Sainz managed to rise above the context, analyzed it with clarity and emerged victorious. A clarity that, before Sunday, no one would have recognized in him. If he showed up for a job interview tomorrow morning, he would be one of the few people who could honestly say that, yes, he is capable of working under high stress conditions.
The use of the DRS as an obstacle to overtaking is a solution certainly favored by the structure of a city track which does not exaggerate, on the contrary, reduces the advantage caused by the opening of the mobile wing, but it is still something that has never been seen before . An invention that is the fruit of meticulous work. After the victory, to the microphones of Sky SportSainz confessed that he had prepared himself for any type of unexpected event that could arise during the race: “I had to resort to every tactic I had in mind, because everything happened that I thought would make things more difficult.” From the Safety Car earlier than expected on the twentieth lap, to the over forty passages on the hard tires when the simulations indicated that it would have been very difficult to get to the end in those conditions, Sainz managed to overcome everything on Sunday, thanks to a race plan that he looked like a Swiss army knife for the variety of tools designed to get him out of any problem he found himself having to face.
Such an in-depth study of the race plan also made possible by a significantly more effective approach to the weekend in recent weeks, as also reiterated by team principal Frederic Vasseur: “What has helped the team is that Carlos has been going better since Monza since the first free practices, and this allows us to build the pace during the weekend.”
For Vasseur, Singapore was his first victory since team principal in Formula 1, but the happiness and euphoria demonstrated on the podium will soon have to give way to a more in-depth reflection on the hierarchies within one’s team. If in the Singapore race Leclerc willingly accepted the role of Sainz’s squire, aware of the fact that he could and should have stayed ahead of him in qualifying to earn the right to fight for victory, the impression is that now the Monegasque expects an identical treatment even with reversed parts. An attitude of this type, however, seems sustainable only for a limited period of time, i.e. this second half of the championship in which neither of the two drivers will be fighting for the World Championship and from time to time the fastest will be favored, in the hope of reaching every times the best team result.
However, it seems difficult for both drivers, whose contract expires in 2024, to accept this subtle balance for the continuation of their respective careers. Whether it was admitted publicly or not, the role of second driver has always ideally been the unfortunate property of Sainz, but the Spaniard, faced with a sudden maturation in recent races, seems ready to ask for more.
2023-09-21 08:00:00
#Carlos #Sainz #risen #level
