Sainz: “I am surprised by the amount of improvements that the best teams bring”

The Spanish Formula 1 driver Carlos Sainz (Williams), who will start from seventeenth position in the Austrian Grand Prix, has acknowledged that he is surprised by “the amount of improvements that the best teams bring”, which makes the differences with the cars in the middle zone “enormous”, and has stated that either they get updates or they are condemned to “fight in Q1”.

“I did a very hard lap, in all the fast corners, putting a lot of effort into both the gravel and the track limits. I did a very good lap. I come from a very complicated weekend, where I was not comfortable with the car, changing many things in the setup, yesterday with engine problems, today suffering a lot… In the last lap of Q1 I got everything I had out of it, and so I’m happy with that lap as much as possible, because it’s the weekend and we’re going very slow,” he said. statements to DAZN after the qualifying session.

Furthermore, he acknowledged that from the beginning he was aware that they were going to suffer at the Red Bull Ring. “When we have seen the list of updates from the other teams for this race, we have clearly seen that if we already suffered in Barcelona with heat and fast corners, here, which is hot and fast corners, we were going to suffer too. There are no secrets. It will be up to us to bring something to Silverstone that we hope will improve this situation. We must continue to lighten the car, we are still very overweight, with a car that does not work in fast corners. Either we bring things or we will continue fighting for Q1,” he said.

On the other hand, the Madrid native reflected on the amount of improvements that many of the teams are achieving. “This is how Formula 1 works, and more so in a year in which everyone is bringing improvements to practically all races. The differences are enormous, they are gigantic. I agree a little with what Fernando -Alonso- said on Thursday, that we are very surprised by the amount of improvements that the best teams bring,” he indicated.

“Without ‘budget cap’ -budget limit-, we would bring more improvements. I don’t know how the ‘top’ teams do it, which must be more efficient with the ‘cost cap’ -cost limit-, because they bring improvements to all the races. Those in the middle zone, I don’t know why, we don’t manage to bring so many, because the ‘budget cap’ limits us. There must be something financial that we are clearly not doing well,” he continued.

“We are strategic, but I get the feeling that the ‘top’ teams are either not top and they simply bring it to the ones that have something because they leave a lot of room for ‘budget cap’, or clearly we are not doing something completely right. It is a slightly curious situation, because the same thing is happening to all the cars in the middle zone, that we are a bit surprised with the amount of updates that the best teams bring,” he concluded.