Carlos Sainz said the 2022 season has been "upsetting" for him due to the problems that have plagued Ferrari.
The Italian team started the season in style, with a one-two finish at the Bahrain Grand Prix while both Red Bull drivers retired with mechanical problems. Things got even better when Charles Leclerc made it two wins from three in Australia, while Max Verstappen suffered another DNF.
But after that, Red Bull got a grip on their early-season reliability problems – and the gremlins started to rear their head over at Ferrari. Since then, their progress has been hampered by engine reliability problems and a swathe of questionable strategy calls.
Sainz experienced one of the biggest highs of his Formula 1 career earlier this year. He won a race for the very first time – at the British Grand Prix, no less – placing him second on the list of drivers with most races under their belt without before their maiden victory, behind Sergio Perez.
But other than that, the Spaniard has had a tough time of it. He struggled to get used to his car early in the year, and once he did he was hit by plenty of strategy errors and mechanical problems, such as the large fire that saw him fail to finish in Austria, just a week after that ultimate high at Silverstone.
"It's been rather upsetting," Sainz said when questioned about his feelings after a trying year which promised so much at the beginning. "I’ve found it very frustrating, that after so many good years in F1, I come into my first year having a competitive car and it's the car that I struggle the most with driving.
"I find it incredibly frustrating, especially knowing how good I am and how good I've been the last few years in F1, how, in the first year that I have a car to win, I find it such a difficult car to drive for my driving style and to set it up for my liking. But then the growth progress has been huge during the season and I managed to find a much better level.
"But then as my championship hopes were starting to pick up, I had this DNF in Austria that completely stole the positive trend. Since then it's been the penalty in France, the difficult race in Hungary, the podium in Spa, but even if I've been a lot more competitive since Canada and Silverstone, it's still been difficult to get a bit of a run of good results."
Despite all that doom and gloom, he remains defiant in the belief that he can win more with Ferrari in the future. "We're going to improve, keep improving as a team and make sure that we also get to a level where we're winning championships," he added.
