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The Belgian Grand Prix was a miserable experience for Ferrari’s Formula 1 drivers. Even the one who doesn’t race for Ferrari yet.
An engine-induced exhaust failure on the way to the grid on a reconnaissance lap ruled Carlos Sainz Jr out of the Spa race before it started. Yet he still managed to match his 2021 team’s points haul from the weekend, as both Ferrari drivers went the distance but failed to finish in the top 10.
That is the nature of Ferrari’s 2020 slump and the way it was so brutally exposed at the power-sensitive Spa circuit. Sainz is saying farewell to McLaren at the end of 2020 as he’s been afforded the opportunity of his career by replacing Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari from 2021. Or at least that’s how it looked on paper.
Now even ex-Ferrari technical boss Ross Brawn, these days F1’s managing director of motorsport, is pondering whether or not Sainz is thinking twice about the move: “What looked like a dream move to Ferrari next year isn’t looking too good right now, and inevitably he must be nervous about his prospects next season.”
The enduring concern over Ferrari’s competitiveness is not lost on Sainz, who said over the weekend that Ferrari has a big step to make to regain the power it has lost from 2019 to 2020. But he has always basically insisted that Ferrari’s problems are not his problems until this season has ended, because he has a job to do at McLaren.
That should be a welcome distraction from pondering his Ferrari prospects. Unfortunately for Sainz, things are pretty gloomy whichever way he looks. He’s suffering a disappointing and frustrating season and his failure to even start the race in Belgium was a new low.
“It’s the second engine with issues this year and the frustration of losing points again is very tough,” he said. “I strongly feel this is not the season we deserve so far.”
He’s absolutely spot on. It’s not a case of results not reflecting his ability, that he can do better – all the usual ‘bad thing not bad’, unseen mitigating circumstances. The results simply don’t reflect his performances because something keeps going wrong to drastically change the outcome.
Sainz is 11th in the championship with a best finish of fifth in the season opener. He’s five places behind young team-mate Lando Norris who has almost double his points tally.
Yet he ranks fourth in a tally of my colleague Edd Straw’s driver ratings so far this year – a position he may occupy in the drivers’ championship if he’d been dealt a fairer hand.
Sainz qualified third and was on course for a probable top-five finish in the Styrian Grand Prix but a fumbled pitstop from McLaren dropped him to ninth, with fastest lap as a consolation. He scored three points instead of a likely 10.
In Hungary he was running inside the points but was forced to wait in his pitbox during the early phase of stops to switch from intermediate to slick tyres because of pitlane traffic. Judging by those around him and their finishing positions, his ninth-place finish should have been between sixth and eighth. So that’s another two to six points sacrificed.
Sainz was one of the puncture victims of the British Grand Prix, which cost him a fifth place in a world without punctures and fourth if his front-left had held on but Valtteri Bottas’s had still blown. That’s a conservative 10 points lost, 12 if you’re sticking to ‘everything else happens the same, but Sainz’s situation is different’ rules.
Another slow pitstop cost him a likely eighth place and another four points at the second Silverstone race. Given his starting position and the sedate nature of the Belgian GP, it’s conceivable that a straightforward seventh place and six more points went begging.
Really, Sainz has been robbed of anywhere from 29 to 35 points this season, and while every driver suffers good luck and bad luck through the season it’s evident that Sainz has had an unbalanced amount of misfortune in only seven races. Those missing points would be enough to put him fourth in the championship, while McLaren would have a handsome buffer in third in the constructors’ standings.
But in this reality, Sainz is a long way from those heights and was left to recover from “a proper knockout” at Spa. “A lot of points again lost, for sure,” he said. “Not a good year so far for me and the team.”
Sainz’s Spa record completes this tale of woe. He’s finished only two of his six attempted Belgian GPs, engine problems wrecked his races before they began in 2015 and 2019, and this time he didn’t officially get on-track at all.
“I’m very disappointed,” he admitted. “I don’t know what’s going on with Spa and me. Three years now I haven’t even started a race here.”
McLaren had no immediate answers for Sainz’s problem and on Sunday evening was waiting for Renault’s analysis to conclude whether or not the failure will prove terminal for an engine that was only introduced at the previous race in Spain. And that was introduced early to cure a mystery cooling problem that had plagued Sainz since Silverstone…
“It was brutal and a big disappointment,” said Sainz’s current team boss Andreas Seidl. “The second time in a row he was not able to even start the race [for McLaren].
“It’s a track he likes, it’s a track race he showed in qualifying he is good [at].
“I think everything was ready for him to score a good result, but it didn’t happen.”
That’s been the story of most races for Sainz, but the Belgian GP took it to a new level.
Fate determined personal misery wasn’t enough for F1 2020’s unluckiest driver – Sainz had to be painfully reminded that 2021 might be a tough ride as well.
