rewrite this content and keep HTML tags
Part 1: Carlos Sainz, Kimi Antonelli and Jack Doohan.
Carlos, why don’t we start with you? Now, it feels like we have yet to see the best of Carlos Sainz in a Williams. Just talk us through these opening three races so far and what the issues have been.Carlos Sainz: Well, if you expect to see the best of Carlos Sainz in a Williams in the third race and in a new car, then yeah, you don’t understand the sport very well, or you know at least how long it might take for a driver to actually get fully up to speed with the car and to fully understand where the last tenth and a half or last two tenths of each car lies. Looking back at the first three races, I think I still haven’t yet put a full weekend together. The speed has been there – in Australia and Suzuka. In China, I had a bit of an off weekend through many different reasons. But to be honest, in Australia and Suzuka I think I was pretty quick, especially given that I’m still new to the car. To manage to be close or in the same tenth as Alex all the way through quali, I think it’s a good start to the season. I just need to make sure now we start doing less mistakes when it comes to executing the weekend and keep improving my speed because obviously I believe the speed still – we can improve it a little bit. But yeah, we are not as far as it seems. I feel like we just need to put a full weekend together and it will come.
How useful is it for you to be coming back to a track where you’ve tested this car already?CS: Very useful, especially because here in testing I felt very comfortable with the car. Actually, it’s a balance and a car that I’ve been looking forward to targeting in the recent races. Given I was not as happy in China, I looked back at the test to a set-up that we were running here and I was keen together with the team to try and put the car somewhere closer to the way it felt in Bahrain test because there I felt like I was up to speed and driving fairly naturally and I didn’t have to think so much while driving. While in China, I remember, and even in Suzuka, I’ve been having to really break my head to understand how to drive the car and to extract all the performance from it. But yeah, you first need to go through these weekends where you have a bit more of a challenging time to understand that and reverse engineer that. That takes time, you know. It’s 24 races. We’ve only done three and obviously everyone expected me to be straight up in the pace, which is a good thing. It means people value me and expect high things of me. But I was the first one that after Bahrain test when I was P1, I was like, I’m nowhere near where I need to be still with this car to perform at the level that I want to perform. So I was the first one coming down expectations and knowing that the first quarter of the year was going to be tough. Especially with a guy like Alex pushing hard and doing such a good job, obviously, it always takes a bit of time to get to that level. So I’m calm. I’m just down to my work doing my things and it will come.
Can we just explore that a little bit deeper? You say you’re happy with the car in the test. What then happened in the races that made you – struggle is not the right word – but made it more difficult for you?CS: Yeah, you know, sometimes you jump into a Formula 1 car and you’re just naturally quick. Whatever you do to the car, the lap time comes easy. And I felt that was the case in Abu Dhabi test last year and in Bahrain test this year. I didn’t need to think while driving and I felt like as soon as I jumped in the car was quick – actually quicker even than what I thought I would be. I was surprisingly quick in my own expectations. And then we went into Australia, the balance changed a bit. The tarmac changes quite a bit from Bahrain to Australia, China and Japan with all these resurfaces that have been done and the car just feels completely different. The through-corner balance is different and you’re just a bit stuck on “what do I do now to my driving?” or “what do I do now to the car?” to go that one more tenth quicker. As I said, I was not far, I was within a tenth. That’s where you start digging into the data and you start working with your engineers. But you need to go through this whole loop, whole process, to actually get to conclusions and understandings, and that takes time and experience and some races. But as I said, I’m calm, I’m happy, and we’re getting there.
Thank you, Carlos. Kimi, let’s come to you now. Fourth, sixth, sixth, including the fastest ever racing lap around Suzuka on Sunday. Can we get your assessment of how it’s gone so far?Kimi Antonelli: I mean, so far I think it’s gone pretty well. The thing I was the happiest about is the consistency throughout the three races and, you know, keep trying to improve weekend by weekend. Of course, every weekend is a massive learning for me, especially learning about the tyre. I think it was really helpful and I think it’s going to be really helpful to have the same compound this weekend as well compared to Suzuka just because I’m understanding more and more the tyre. I think in the first couple of races I really struggled with warm-up when it was coming to quali, and I think Suzuka was a big step forward on that side. So obviously massive learning, but so far I’m happy with how it’s going. Of course, you know George is running really well and it’s really helping me to develop and push myself even further. But I’m happy because I’m getting there slowly.
George is having his best ever start to a season in Formula 1. When you look at his data and compare your data, where are the big areas where you feel you can still improve?KA: Well, I think now he has quite a bit of experience with the car and in F1 in general. What the main difference is, like you can see the confidence he has. He knows how to place the car and also where the car is going to end up in a corner while pushing. So there’s a lot of knowledge and confidence as well. But I think Suzuka was a really big step for me in terms of confidence and understanding the car. So I’m really looking forward to this weekend because obviously it’s a track that I know and obviously conditions will be much different compared to what we had in testing because it’s going to be much hotter. But I’m looking forward to see what we can do during the weekend.
You’re used to the heat from Formula 2 here, aren’t you? What are your goals for this week?KA: Keep the positive trend, keep improving the qualifying pace because I think the speed is there, but it’s more about being able to put all the dots together, starting from the warm-up and then the lap itself. But yeah, keep the positive trend and then obviously keep working hard and we’ll see what the result is going to be on Sunday.
Kimi, thank you very much for that. Jack, let’s come to you now. You’ve shown really good speed this year, but you haven’t had the smoothest run so far. Can we just get your summary of how it’s gone?Jack Doohan: Yeah, I think you summarised it quite well to be honest. I look forward to just having that clean weekend, putting it all together and yeah, this weekend we have a perfect opportunity to have a full race weekend again and I look forward to coming back to Bahrain – as the others have touched on – somewhere we were testing, albeit I think it’s 25°C hotter here today, so it’s going to be much, much different. Car balance, feeling, grip – going to feel terrible. A lot of things that are going to be coming after FP. But I look forward to cracking on. We’re now at, I think, round four. So we’re starting to get into it and this back-to-back-to-back triple header is going to be nice just to keep the flow.
How does the Bahrain test at the end of February help you this weekend? What do you not have to do this weekend that you have to do when you go to a track for the first time?JD: Yeah, I think to be honest Bahrain test was a good place to learn the car initially. I wasn’t exactly super happy leaving the test in general, but now we know especially the areas that we needed to work on and at least the ballpark window and where we’re going to start. We definitely won’t be setting the car up where we ended up on one of the evening sessions at 10°C, but certainly trying to target maybe a little bit more at the end of one of those AM sessions and plus a few things that we found post in the simulator.
Questions From The Floor
(David Croft – Sky Sports F1) A couple of questions, actually, if that’s all right. First and foremost, Jack, are you OK? Last time we saw you getting out the car in Suzuka, you were holding your left-hand side a little bit. Is everything all right? Are you fully recovered?JD: Yeah, just winded. Just 100%. All completely perfect, yeah. Thank you.
And Carlos, to get back to you. What are the Ferrari habits you’re having to unlearn in this Williams car?CS: I think, to be honest, they’re a bit too technical to explain them in a press conference.
(David Croft – Sky Sports F1) Try me and keep it simple.CS: We can try and sit with a piece of data in front of us and an onboard and I can maybe explain it to you. So yeah, I’d rather not go into that level of detail of the little things that you need to do with your driving style to extract the most out of each car. Obviously, Ferrari had certain car balance, a certain direction that we followed after three or four years of developing that car that required you to brake in a certain manner, turn in a certain manner, release the brake in a certain place – which you fall into a trap of after three years of muscle memory of doing everything that way. And when you jump into a different car, and especially under pressure in quali, you try and find the last two tenths of the car. You fall into your muscle memory because that’s the muscle memory that you have from three years. It’s not that you need to unlearn them, because those traits are actually making me very quick also in other types of corners. But you need to remember, in a certain type of corner, to not do it. That’s why it’s almost impossible to ask anyone to be quick in the first three races with a car, when you are only putting it the first sets of Soft tyres and zero kilos of fuel for the first time in those first three races – completely different tracks, completely different conditions, completely different tarmacs – and you’re having to relearn a lot of these things. And as I said, given how new everything is, for me to be in the same tenth in quali as a guy like Alex in Australia and at a confidence track like Suzuka, I’m not in a bad place. I just need to make sure I put the whole weekend together, with the penalties, with finding the lap time exactly in Q2 – because now Q2 for us is the lap of your life, with the field within two tenths in Q2. So if you don’t put the lap in that moment of Q2, your weekend is over because you start 12th instead of P9. You cannot overtake in Suzuka and you cannot overtake in the midfield. So it’s the very small details that need to come together.
