‘FASTER’ FERRARI STILL CAN’T BEAT VERSTAPPEN
“I left everything out there. But compared to Red Bull, we were quicker the whole race. First time this season I can say that I was fastest man on track.” Carlos Sainz’s demeanour in the four 2022 post-race press conferences he’d attended before last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix had been strikingly downbeat. His struggles to gel with the Ferrari F1-75 and team-mate Charles Leclerc’s superiority explained why the famously open and analytical driver didn’t want to over-celebrate. This time, he exuded confidence. But it was paired with familiar despair, because Max Verstappen had beaten him to victory in Formula 1’s first race in Montreal since 2019.
At the start of the 70-lap affair, Fernando Alonso’s Alpine sat between Verstappen and Sainz at the head of the grid. But any aspiration the double world champion had of attacking polesitting Verstappen at the first corner, where he suspected the Dutchman might drive with his title ambitions in mind, was struck down as soon as the lights went out. Verstappen, although wary that “it was very low grip out there” after Saturday’s rain washed away the rubber laid down during Friday practice, shot away from pole and comfortably led into Turn 1. Sainz looked to the inside as Lewis Hamilton locked his left-front just behind, but Alonso held on, which aided Verstappen’s run to a one-second lead at the end of the first tour.
It took Sainz until the end of the third lap before he passed his fellow Spaniard – with DRS at the first chance running down the long back straight. From there he was left with a 2.5s gap to Verstappen, which increased to 3.1s by the end of lap five.
But here, Red Bull’s
