Sainz makes personal Ferrari claim after strong run of results

Carlos Sainz believes he driving at his best since he joined the Ferrari Formula 1 team in 2021 as team-mate to Charles Leclerc.

Now in his third season with the Scuderia, Sainz has earned 15 of his 17 career podiums, including a first career win at the 2022 British Grand Prix, before adding another in Singapore to end Max Verstappen's dominant '23 run.

Since the summer break, Sainz out-performed Leclerc in the Netherlands, Italy and Singapore, although he did finish behind the Monegasque in Japan.

At Monza and Marina Bay, Sainz qualified on pole position for both races, scoring third place and first, respectively for his first podiums of the season.

Since joining Ferrari, Sainz has often been outpaced by Leclerc, who has taken three wins and 13 pole positions, but the Spanish driver's confidence is high after recent races.

'I'm extracting my full potential'

"I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling very well with the car and I'm driving very well, probably the best since I've been a Ferrari driver and finally I’m extracting my full potential,” he told media including RacingNews365.

“And I'm happy to see that. I'm happy, too, with the work that I'm doing with my engineers to little by little keep extracting more and more potential and more performance out of the car.

“It’s obviously going to give me a lot of confidence moving forward.

“We need to keep working on the race pace.

“In Monza, you could see what happened and Singapore was another good test to see how much progress we've made in that area."