Carlos Sainz recalls his surprise when Laurent Mekies and Mattia Binotto revealed to him how Ferrari had analyzed his performances.
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Even before Carlos Sainz competed in his first Grand Prix under Ferrari colors, the Italian team already knew his driving in minute detail. A discovery that particularly surprised the Spaniard upon his arrival in Maranello in 2021.
After two seasons spent at McLaren alongside Lando Norris, Sainz had been chosen by Ferrari to succeed Sebastian Vettel. He was then starting his seventh campaign in Formula 1 after also having raced for Toro Rosso and Renault.
However, Ferrari had not just observed his results. Mattia Binotto, then team principal, and Laurent Mekies, who held the position of sporting director before becoming today the head of Red Bull, had conducted a particularly thorough analysis of his first six seasons.
Ferrari had analyzed six years of career
Sainz still remembers his reaction when he discovered the extent of the information accumulated by his new team.
“I remember that when I arrived at Ferrari, Mattia [Binotto] and Laurent showed me a document summarizing all my performances from the previous six years against my teammates.”
The Spaniard especially did not expect that Ferrari could have obtained such a precise view of his performances in his former teams.
“I was shocked to see everything they knew. At McLaren, Renault, and Toro Rosso, I thought they couldn’t know all that.”
The analysis went far beyond simple race or qualifying results. Ferrari had dissected his performances according to conditions and different situations encountered during a weekend.
“They had details on wet conditions, transitions from dry to wet, dry, qualifying. They had studied me and that’s why they chose me.”
His weaknesses also identified
Ferrari had also determined the areas where Sainz still needed to improve. An analysis that precisely matched the one the driver had made himself.
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“They then showed me the statistics on which they thought I could improve, and I said to myself: ‘These are also the statistics I knew I had to improve on’.”
At the time, several drivers were likely to replace Vettel for the 2021 season. Sainz now believes that this detailed study of his performances played an important role in Ferrari’s decision.
The Spaniard would ultimately spend four seasons in Maranello and experience the most fruitful period of his Formula 1 career so far, including several victories.
Sainz preferred over several candidates
The level of analysis deployed by Ferrari had impressed Sainz even more because the team had several options to replace Vettel, including Daniel Ricciardo.
“I wasn’t really prepared to discover that teams observed drivers with such a level of detail.”
“That a team like Ferrari studied me and chose me over Daniel Ricciardo or other candidates for this seat impressed me.”
An experience that mainly allowed him to measure the extent of the tools that top teams have to evaluate their future drivers.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see that the best teams, or those with the necessary tools, are capable of going so far into detail.”
More than five years after his arrival at Ferrari, Sainz thus keeps a particularly striking memory of this first presentation with Binotto and Mekies: proof that his recruitment was the result of a meticulous analysis of several years of performances.
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