致自己人：我的英语和荒废没有区别，所以如若有任何措辞和语法错误欢迎随时随地任何形式任何语气指明，但本文与我在一周多前的一日两贴相比，除了对内容做了糅合，同样也对数据进行了完备，同时严谨并完善了逻辑链条，所以如果你想要对内容进行反驳，建议深思熟虑。

The curious case of Carlos Sainz, as he’s been confirmed as the WORST full-time Ferrari driver in WDC standings since 1996. Why is it happening, and what’s the numbers and stories behind this?

  This article is originated in Nov 6, 2024, 3 days after 2024 Sao Paulo Grand Prix in Chinese social media Tieba, then transcribed into a short English version to reddit (I got no karmas (100 required) to have it posted in r/formula1, so I posted somewhere else) in Nov 10 2024, and polished afterwards since Nov 12 2024, and published first on another Chinese social media Bilibili in Nov 17 2024. just in case I never have the chance to post this to r/formula1 considering my shorter version of it only provides me with 4 karmas.

  After Brazil 2024 and with 3 rounds of 86 points available, the points gap between Sainz and current P2 in the WDC standings (Norris) is 87 points (244-331), which means Sainz has been officially out of contention of battle for P2 in WDC 10 years in a row, including his 4-year stint with Ferrari. And everyone else (full-time Ferrari driver for sure) since 1996 has at least a runner-up trophy to their name, including Schumi, Irvine, Barrichello, Massa, Raikkonen, Alonso, Vettel and Leclerc.

  Ironically and embarrassingly, Sainz for now slots in P5 in this year’s championship standings which happens to be his career best, so if after the conclusion of this season Sainz failed to improve to P4 or better, he will not only become the worst in 30 years, but also he will be joining Stefan Johansson and Jean Alesi for the tied-2nd worst driver of Ferrari since 1974, with these two only managed to snatch a single P5 in driver standings in their Ferrari stint(well, at least Sainz already has two but Alesi had a P4 in Benetton and Johansson was a Le Mans 24H winner), only beating Ivan Capelli who only had one season for Ferrari(P13, career high is P7) in 1992. And 1974 is exactly the year that Ferrari decided to field in a two full-time driver line-up and made this a regular routine ever since (before 1974, Ferrari didn’t always put two full-time entries to the championship, sometimes a bit more cars, sometimes with a couple of Grand Prix unable to attend, sometimes only have one full-time entry etc).

  After simply letting numbers do the talk, showing the most superficial reason why I think Sainz is the probably, if not definitely the worst since 1996 and as it may contradicts with your first impression, let’s try to retrospect the numbers behind the table of Sainz’s Ferrari career a little bit to figure out why it is happening. Conclusions first: Throughout the years of Formula 1 as it is more of a competition of cars rather than drivers, fans may not notice that the performance of the car can cunningly trick your eyes, leading you to an inaccurate judgement about drivers’ performance, for the case of Carlos Sainz, it is as simple as that: the better the car is, the worse will Sainz perform, and even furthermore, he is not even Mr Consistency as how most fans rate him. as what I will mention below exactly matches the take that I make.

  So, let the story begins! People may talk about how persuasive 2021 is as Sainz beats Leclerc in his first year for Ferrari in equal status, that’s undeniably true, but it doesn’t reveal what is the full story behind the championship table. Here is both Ferrari drivers’ scoresheet in 2021,

They say the size is not compatible as it's too flat, so l leave some blank space to make it fit

  Under this table, notably at first, Sainz leads number of podiums of a 4-1 advantage against Leclerc, but if we use the roughest calculation method, with Ferrari finished 3rd that year, that we assume in every Grand Prix in 2021 Ferrari was the third quickest, which means theoretically they finish P5 and P6 respectively in every race that year. So, how many times did they manage to finish higher than 5th in 2021? Amazingly, Sainz’s tally remained 4, with no P4 in the bag, and Leclerc had 6 P4 alone, which means Leclerc now had 7 top-4 finish, three more than Sainz’s top 4 combined. And that’s not the full story, what about top 5s, considering using the method above, P5 is a position that make you finish ahead of your teammate? The answer for Sainz was two P5s, which means his top 5 finishes summed up to 6, still one short to Leclerc’s top 4 finish, not to mention himself had three P5s that year. If you think this hints nothing, don’t worry, because the next few years will be the carbon copy of this, and we don’t even mention h2h this year yet.

There will be more to come

  So the critical number is, with the points gap settled as 5.5 pts, Leclerc need one less retirement, so he can hedge the loss with an average score (no matter what 7.23 and 7.95 is enough), and with Sainz scored 33 in Monaco and Hungary, helped to recover from his deficit of 6 positions and 28 points in those 20 races.

  You may not think those numbers indicate much, but if put the other 3 seasons on the table, you’ll be able to see a clearer picture. So here it is:

Forgive my amateur PS skill though, 2024 sill has 3 Grand Prix to go, but to make it fit, you see only two blank spaces for each driver

  And to simply sum it up we have something like this

Do you know why were some numbers highlighted?

  At the first glance you may wonder where’s red number in 2022 and what does it mean, well, the red indicates in every year (yes including 2022) at which position Sainz manage to finish or better, that failed to equal the number Leclerc manage to finish one position higher. For example, this year for now, Sainz has 13 top5, one less than Leclerc’s top4 and so on. Where’s 2022 then? In the missing part that outside top5, Leclerc had four P6 and three DNF, while Sainz had one P8 and 6 DNF, which means Leclerc had 19 top6 and Sainz had 15 top7. And the blue simply means at which position Leclerc managed to finish more AND overturn the table at the time (or led all the way like 22/24). Yellow? It means what it was like before the blue turned it into red.

  Here comes the questions: how do you define consistency? Is continuously performing at a high or very high level consistent, like Max did in 23? What about managed to avoid to lowest of lows and didn’t have to many ups and downs like what Sainz did in 21? If both are consistent, then will you consider a driver managed to be higher than P6 in all the races he finished and had the most top6s in 2022, as a consistent performance? Because actually, contrary to common sense, it’s Leclerc who had the best worst finish in 2022, while Max and Checo, both had P7s in the season (their worst finishing position as well), and arguably it was Checo’s best season in performance in Red Bull. And in this year, so far Leclerc has tied-most top4s and top5s right now. While people talk about Sainz being consistent, one of the key reasons is Leclerc is not quite consistent compared to Sainz, but as those numbers were mostly under the radar, is Leclerc really very inconsistent? If that’s still the case, then how Sainz failed to have more top5s and Leclerc’s top4s in 3 years when they were together? Or in other words, is a driver significantly under the upper hand from the outcome of his teammate consistent? Or even so you think both are consistent now, are they consistent in the same way, and what kind of consistency Ferrari really needs?

  Though in my conclusion Sainz is not really Mr. consistency, whether you love it or hate it, there is another reason I didn’t mention above that I back my own opinion firmly, which is his true strengths that lies in yellow numbers I highlighted above. So what are they? Rather than consistency as most fans get confused with, or not even intelligence as this word doesn’t precisely describe his strength, I think Sainz is likely to be one of the best hound in the paddock, as he can sniff the chance out of thing with instant reaction on multiple occasions in his career and on those occasions you often find it was more from his own decision came first rather than the team’s. His mindset of instinct, unlike intelligence requires more of second thought, contributed to lots of his highlights of driving and radio communications.

  But, why Sainz had more the highest of highs in those bogey seasons of Ferrari and equipped with a brilliant mindset, yet he never ended higher than Leclerc for a second time? Or what reasons helped Sainz beat Leclerc in 21 other than Sainz’s strength? Remember the first diagram only mentioned 2021? Now we particularly pick out 2023 season to tackle a comparison, and we see this, and this, indicates the first part of my conclusion, which is exactly how car performances put an impact on people’s rating about drivers.

Sometimes calculations aren't easy, but here the harder thing is how to find the right number to correlate.

  *Sainz classified as P18 in Abu Dhabi, but with 2 laps remaining he was P10 as he made 2 successive pit stops which dropped him to P18, which means 88 is also acceptable. But a single point was not able to change obvious things as season ended, so yeah I skipped that.

  Now the key question is, why Leclerc himself actually need one more retirement (3 more in 23, when in 21 was 2) rather than one less in the case of 2021 (as what I’ve mentioned above) and the same figure of deficit of points finish (which is 2) to actually overhaul at the end of 2023 and from percentage’s perspective, Sainz was performing better than 2021? In short, it’s because in both years Ferrari finished P3 in WCC, 2021 was closer to 4th but 23 season they almost had P2 in the end! And mathematically, when the car is better in 2023 as Sainz only benefited a 20-point advantage of 3 less DNFs rather than 33 pts from 2 less DNF in 21, you see Leclerc only need 2 finishes of 10.88 to wipe out the loss and in 2021 he needed a bit more than 4. So now I’ll raise the first and only what if theory in the article (I know how unpopular this gradually become since the famous quote in short of “if mom balls, dad” from Max, but the reason why I put up the theory is this assumption somewhat turned into reality of 2023), so if Sainz still able to grab 33 pts from less DNFs than Leclerc in 2021, but in 2021 we had a SF-23 onboard, then Leclerc only needed a bit more than 3 race to cover off, exactly with one finish spare against 2021, and in those two years, their difference are both under one average finish, so that spare race is how Leclerc stayed ahead in 23 and the other way around in 21, it’s because the car is the least superior among last 4 year and when car gets better, Leclerc will recover quicker because better car equals better position and higher average points. And as you can see in the graph, even the percentages were slightly closer, but the gap grows quicker as Leclerc needed 20 h2h to build a 28.5 pts advantage, in 2023 advantage shrank to 27 pts yet with only 15 occasions instead.

  And also you may wonder, if Sainz had one less DNF, wouldn’t he be able to stay ahead again? Firstly, if that’s the case, Sainz in 2021 with 2 less DNF won the duel, but in 23 he needed 4 less, as the car considerably better, my conclusion of “the better the car is, the worse Sainz performs’ still stands; additionally, the right question you should be really curious about is “why Sainz wouldn’t be able to capitalise the advantages from less retirement unlike the case of 2021?” Here is the intriguing part, revealing how Sainz’s strength turned into his Achilles’ heel with the improvement of car performance. Before we use one recent and fitted example, let’s focus on what happened in 23. Unlike 21, Sainz had 2 DNFs, which led to a chance Leclerc can make best use of, even though he only snatched 25 pts, 8 less than Sainz bagged in 21, but Sainz himself didn’t achieve an equal or close average from 5 DNFs of his teammate, with 16.5 per race in 21. Even though that’s rare case, that during Leclerc’s 2 DNFs in 2021, happened to be Sainz’s best result, and even more so, it wasn’t only Leclerc’s contribution, as Bottas also had the Guinness Record tire change in Monaco and the Meleedes moment in Hungary that helped out Sainz even more, the downhill trend in percentage wise as Sainz didn’t score as much as 2021 while Leclerc retired is still undisputable. Why this happened? Or in what circumstance you can actually score much more than normal race weekend, unlike the case of Sainz when compared 2023 with 2021? Do you remember there is one recent example that I keep ignoring purposely above? That’s what happened to Alpine in Sao Paulo! As the major talking point almost went everywhere to every team, there is only thing that we need to focus: how many points did Alpine score on average before and after Brazil? Well, before there is only 14 pts with 20 Grand Prix, measuring an average of 0.7/round for the team, but now they have 49 pts in 21 weekends, triple the average before with a number of 2.33 and this round with 35 points, alone it multiplied 15 times with their current season average! Will you say Sainz is bad because he never multiplied that many times compared to Alpine’s progress as he had 113.87% or 100.34% of pts when big chances to pull the gap came into play his favour? We know for sure that’s nonsense, but just because Alpine had such a poor car that was almost a backmarker and barely reached midfield, when there was a big chance they could seize, this multiplier wound rise like a rocket if they really sealed the deal. And some of Sainz’s highlight moments coincided with Alpine’s success last weekend, featured with precise decision making and putting the survival task rather than extract blistering pace as top priority, showed that Sainz’s strength is somewhat more powerful when given an under-performing car.

  And on the other side of the garage, Leclerc himself is more of a gambler, tends to put everything on the line when he finds himself in a setback situation, like in Silverstone and Interlagos, he was one of earliest stoppers on both occasions, with neither decision proved to be the most ideal. So when compare with Leclerc, you misunderstand consistency is Sainz’s strength as he takes a more conservative approach, but the reason behind his consistency is his first reaction with a mindset of survival, as it requires more of a cool head rather than driving consistently, and when the car gets better, you can see drivers themselves don’t need to overdrive the car and good results will come naturally, that’s the reason why Leclerc is very reliable now and even in 2022 he performed OK and grabbed P2 in the end. And as Sainz has lost all the h2h four years in a row, which means when Ferrari offers them a better car, the points gap per position will increase and result in Sainz performing worse in 22 and 24. He even couldn’t capitalise as many points as 2021 when the case of Silverstone 24 appeared, a P6 (Sainz’s position there) was more than average of Leclerc’s finish in 21 but less than this year’s, not mentioning Leclerc returned the favour with a P6 after Sainz’s double crash on Sunday. And in 2022 and 2024 for now Sainz had more DNFs than Leclerc, with those two years the better half of Sainz’s Ferrari, with the points gap immense; in 21 and 23 the situation reversed but the pair almost went level-pegging. To sum up, due to Sainz’s lack of pace, his strength’s effort downsized to a smaller scale once the car is better, because modern era F1 with very reliable car and better talent pool, in a heavy weight duel for championship, pace is equally critical as consistency, but dramas, crashes, safety cars etc that can mix things up are a lot less from a whole season’s point of view in recent years, which leaves less space for drivers like Sainz to improvise with their mindset in those flashing yet game-changing moments, and F1 is always more about the car than the driver, so Sainz’s performance in 22 and 24 is underwhelming is understandable because only have one obvious strength that is not pace-related is not all-round enough with your teammate or rival also extremely talented and that’s when Sainz exposed his Achilles heel to the public.

  So if Sainz is really consistent, shouldn’t be able to finish more times in each of the four years? If Sainz is really very quick, then in this year it’s the first time that both had 3 non-scores Sunday, with their gap 46 points (Jeddah excluded), and currently with 36 pts gap to McLaren, and 13-point lead to Red Bull, this tantalizingly close year can probably be the closest year for Ferrari to clinch a WCC title since the introduction of new points system in 2010 (previously the closest was 2012, Ferrari was 60 pts behind Red Bull) so this SF-24 is possibly to be the best car from at least 2019, if Ferrari had two Sainzs, they would be in P3 in WCC for now, and two Leclercs wound put them provisionally P1, so do you think the performance from Sainz is really competent for Ferrari’s requirement, to be able to mount a serious title challenge with every team (except Red Bull maybe) trying to maximize their line-ups’ potential?

  Shockingly to me is, even Eddie Irvine, who never scored a single pole position to his name in his entire F1 career, managed a P4 in 1998(even though he was only P11 and P7 in 96/97 respectively). And everyone else since 1996, their worst best result is P2 with Sainz’s P5 provisionally. And the other 3 worst drivers in the last 50 years, were all in a 16 year-long era of Ferrari’s title winning drought from 1983 to 1999, and this year happens to be the 16th year of another title-less record since 2008 with only a single driver of Sainz performs on this level on the championship table, and in the first 16-year drought, there were four years in total that Ferrari failed to finish as top 3 in constructors: 86/87/92/93 (all 4th), and you’ll find out all three drivers shared duties within those years: Johansson in 86, Capelli in 92 and Alesi for 92/93 ,and in this drought Tifosi is currently experiencing, only two years (4th in 09 and 6th in 20) Ferrari finished outside top 3, and Sainz dodged all of them. In other word, Sainz will have the possibility to be the first driver since at least 1974 that failed to finish inside top 4 with their entire Ferrari career having a car that finished P3 or higher in WCC standings. So, is Carlos Sainz possibly one of the worst driver pick from Ferrari in the last 30 or even 50 years? If you think he is not, considering no matter how good or bad they perform, there is absolutely one to be the best in Ferrari (I guess no one will mention other names than Michael), and there is definitely one to be the worst, if Sainz is not, then who is? If Sainz is not, then where will you rate him among the list since 1996 or even 1974? Who do you think Sainz can actually beat in recent years of Ferrari history? And to all of those loyal Sainz supporters think I’m biased or harsh, this article is only a just objective interpretation statistically and without personal preferences interfered. I truly wish Sainz can have a bright future in his next chapter of F1 career and be able to end Williams’s title eagerness after Newey’s departure, hopefully Sainz can turn the table and become a true worthy F1 champion, able to prove me wrong, but still, those numbers make me doubt about it. I mean, I believe in the end, no matter where he is, winner wins, right?