Although Carlos Sainz trails Charles Leclerc in the F1 2024 head-to-head stats, the Spaniard rates his Ferrari team-mate as one of the fastest guys, if “not the fastest”, he’s raced against.

And this is a driver who has been team-mates with triple World Champion Max Verstappen and 2024 title contender Lando Norris.

Carlos Sainz reveals ‘incredibly close’ numbers with Charles Leclerc

Joining Ferrari in 2021, Sainz went into this year’s championship trailing Leclerc 2-1 in the overall standings, although twice the gap between the team-mates was six points or fewer.

This season, which is Sainz’s last with Ferrari before he heads to Williams, Leclerc has gained a march on the Spaniard having finished ahead 11 times with the Monegasque driver up by 245 points to 190.

The gap in the standings, though, doesn’t tell the full picture as Sainz has often been stuck to his team-mate’s rear wing in both qualifying and the race.

Sainz reckons that says a lot about his own speed as he rates Leclerc up there with the fastest drivers on the F1 grid.

“Charles is, if not the fastest, one of the fastest guys I’ve ever faced, especially at one lap pace,” he told Spanish daily AS.

“And the gap to him has been very small from practice to race pace. The team keeps stats for the whole year and the numbers are incredibly close. Always with similar points, with very close starting grid positions.

“The only problems have come from always starting together on the track, one behind the other, but that has been Ferrari’s advantage with a very balanced driver pairing.”

F1 2024: Ferrari team-mate head-to-head stats

????F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

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Carlos Sainz on his pride and regrets during his Ferrari stint

But for Sainz, the Ferrari drive is almost over, just six races remaining before he bids farewell to the Maranello team.

Although he had hoped to extend with Ferrari, the team announced in February they’d signed Lewis Hamilton replace him in 2025. Sainz will instead race for Williams, teaming up with Alex Albon after signing a multi-year contract.

The three-time Grand Prix winner leaves the team proud of the part he has played in Ferrari’s recovery.

“When I signed with Ferrari they were coming from one of the most difficult times for them in recent years, they were way back in 2020, more than a second a lap behind the best,” he said.

“If you see how Ferrari was when I arrived and how it is now, I am proud of the progress that has been made because of all the work we have done to get here.

“There have been ups and downs in the process, the evolution in 2022, the downgrade in 2023 and the gradual improvement in 2024. They’ve been seasons that have allowed me to win my first races in F1, get my first poles, get a lot of podiums.

“I’m happy to have signed for a historic team and to have enjoyed being a Ferrari driver during these years.”

But as with most things in life, there too are regrets.

“I’m upset with the start of the 2022 season,” he said. “the regulations change affected me a lot as a driver. They were very different cars to the ones we had until 2021, which we had been driving for many years.

“Ferrari had a very good start to the season with a fast car, but very difficult to drive and very strange. You had to have a strange way of driving it that didn’t suit my style and I missed out on opportunities to win because I wasn’t 100 per cent at ease with the car.”

That season Leclerc was an early challenger for the World title before falling off the pace to finish a distant runner-up to Verstappen while Sainz struggled to get the best out of the F1-75 and was P5, 62 behind his team-mate.

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