2022 mid-season F1 driver ranking part 3: 10-6 · RaceFans

The penultimate segment in RaceFans’ countdown of the best performing drivers of the 2022 Formula 1 season so far sees the first lot of drivers in the top half of the field.

10 – Carlos Sainz Jnr – Ferrari

When Carlos Sainz Jnr joined Ferrari in 2021 alongside the naturally talented Charles Leclerc, many expected that Sainz would have a major challenge to keep up with his new team mate over the course of the season. That did not prove the case, however, and Sainz even ended up ahead of Leclerc in the final standings.

But with the new cars introduced for the 2022 season, Sainz has been very much the second best driver at Ferrari over the course of the year so far.

Right from the first race of the season in Bahrain, it was clear that Leclerc was more comfortable with the new ground effect F1-75 than his team mate. While he took second after Max Verstappen’s retirement to complete the one-two for Ferrari. He took third place in Jeddah, again behind his team mate, before the troubles truly began.

In Melbourne, back luck struck him when he lost his first Q3 lap with a red flag, then a delay meant he left the garage later than planned. On his eventual flying lap, a big mistake at the high speed chicane left him ninth on the grid, then he spun out on the second lap after having fallen to 14th at the start.

At Imola, he crashed in Q2 in the wet but managed to recover places thanks to the sprint race. However, his grand prix lasted only one corner thanks to Daniel Ricciardo. A third big error in a third consecutive weekend in Miami when he crashed in practice left cynics pondering if Ferrari had made a mistake in committing to him long term, before yet another mistake in Barcelona meant he was lucky not to retire when skidding into the gravel early in the race.

Fortunately, he picked up his form from Monaco. A smart call to switch from wet tyres to slicks moved him ahead of Leclerc and he almost could have won, had he not caught Latifi out of the pits. He also came agonisingly close to a first win in Montreal, but could not hunt down Verstappen in the end.

Eventually his big breakthrough came in Silverstone where he took pole position in the wet and overtook his team mate to win after Ferrari left Leclerc on an island on strategy following a late Safety Car. Car failures…