mario wrote:Actually, the mention of Sainz Jr. does bring up something I was wondering - what is the general opinion of Sainz Jr.'s abilities?
Red Bull seem to see something in him, because they have backed him since 2010, making him one of their longest serving drivers, yet his result in the junior series do not really seem outstanding.
His 2012 Formula 3 campaigns are, at least on paper, nothing spectacular - only winning races in one of the three Formula 3 series he competed in that season and finished behind Blomqvist in the Euro F3 championship to boot. As for his 2013 GP3 series campaign, even allowing for two disqualifications he was still comprehensively beaten by Kvyat and his finishing positions seem to have been rather inconsistent over the course of a season too.
OK, he performed reasonably well in the 2013 Young Driver test and was complimented on his feedback, but from what I can recall his lap times were not outstanding in that session either. Apart from this burst of speed in the FR3.5 series, I'm not sure where else I would have seen the appeal of Sainz Jr. in other junior series - but perhaps that is just me.
Sainz actually started cars strongly, taking a brilliant fourth in Formula BMW Europe in 2010 (top rookie by a mile), and then had a strong year in Formula Renault 2.0 (after Formula BMW went kaput), where he won the NEC championship and finished second in Eurocup, behind none other than Robin Frijns. 2012 was bad for him because he did double campaigns in British F3 and F3 Euroseries..he was electric at the start, but failed to keep up those performances, his cause not being helped by spinning and crashing far too often.
I'll say he didn't deserve to finish as low as 10th in GP3 last year, but still, his collisions with Williamson at Barcelona and Niederhauser at Abu Dhabi were nothing short of brainfades. Apart from a good showing at Monaco, he didn't really fire much in his part-time FR3.5 campaign last year, and though that was partly down to the fact that Zeta Corse are one of the stragglers in WSR, he was still largely outperformed by Will Buller, who himself got owned by two F3 rookies in the truncated British F3 series last year.
One facet that could be why he's doing well this year is that he has absolutely no distractions apart from his 3.5 campaign. Secondly, apart from tyre compounds, there haven't been any changes in the series from 2013, and the fact that he's basically sitting in the same car that took Kevin Magnussen to the title last year must certainly help. DAMS are also known to focus on one driver (cue Grosjean in 2011 GP2, or Magnussen last year) so it's no surprise why he's doing this well.
Sainz has always been rather electric, and I firmly believe, that in terms of raw pace and talent he's second to no one in junior formulae at the moment. He just needed a change of mindset and it seems to have worked for him thus far.
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