Carlos Sainz has explained how he managed various issues with the brakes on his Ferrari car during his run to third place in Formula 1’s 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Sainz’s Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc had started second but encountered a sizeable brake temperature imbalance that saw him struggle in the opening stages.
The Ferrari cars would swap places on track before Sainz then accelerated on to overtake George Russell and claim a podium alongside the two Red Bull drivers.
Sainz has documented how he countered problems with his own brakes on the SF-24 by picking his moments between attacking other cars and running in clear air.
“The first stint and then the beginning of the second stint, whenever we were in traffic, we were having a lot of brake vibrations and the pedal at one point started to go long,” he said.
“So it was always a balancing act between do I go for it and try to get rid of the dirty air and overtake people. Or do I start saving my brakes because they’re gonna fail or something’s gonna happen?
“I started saving by moving a bit on the straight to cool the side that it was getting hotter and the vibration started to get better and then I could start to make moves and move forward.
“But as I said the start wasn’t great, the brakes were still a bit of a limitation for a bit and then once everything settled I could do my pace, do my overtakes and go for the podium.”
Speaking prior to Ferrari’s post-race debrief, Sainz said that he was unsure about the “severity” in which Leclerc was hampered as he trailed 14s behind his team-mate.
The Spaniard claimed it was a hitch Ferrari couldn’t diagnose at reduced speeds in testing, citing the team might need to be more cautious with cooling in later rounds.
“For me it was at one point pretty bad to it’s something that you cannot discover in testing because in testing you never put yourself in 10 laps consecutive behind four cars getting all the hot air from the four cars in front and the brakes never cool down,” he explained.
“I try not to panic, I try to put the side that was more heated and I took a different line on the straights to cool them down.
“And yeah, at one point the pedals started to go quite long and also a lot of brake vibrations, which changes your feeling on the braking quite a lot.
“But yeah, I kept it cool, managed them, and as soon as I got a bit of cleaner, it cleared and it became a lot better.
“But it’s something that we definitely maybe need to take a bit more margin going into the next few races.”
