Sainz With Best Performance Of 2023 Season According To Palmer

Sunday, 24 December 2023 at 21:00

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer rated Carlos Sainz's performance during the Singapore Grand Prix as the best of any driver on the grid this season.

Jolyon Palmer wrote an article for Formula 1 in which he rated the best moments, performances, and surprises of the most recent season.

As the biggest surprise, he pinpointed Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin at the beginning of the season. When it came to best performance, he wrote:

"This has to be Carlos Sainz in Singapore. It was the one race that Red Bull weren’t in contention and it was a wide open fight for who could take the spoils."

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Carlos Sainz managed to put his Ferrari on pole during the Saturday qualifying session. With both Red Bull cars outside of the top ten after horrible qualifying, it seemed the race could finally be won by somebody else, and Sainz was there to take the chance.

After starting the race from the pole, he controlled the pace at the front and showed his strategic genius at the end when he gave Lando Norris in second-place DRS on purpose.

The Mercedes cars behind them were faster and would overtake Sainz and Norris one by one. But thanks to Sainz's strategy of giving DRS to Norris, George Russell, in third place, couldn't do anything, and the Spaniard won the race.

"Two Ferraris, two Mercedes and Lando Norris all fought it out, but a perfectly managed race from Sainz claimed it. This was a brilliant example of a thinking driver claiming the most calculated of victories."

Palmer suggested it was a very nice and brave idea from Sainz to collaborate with rivals in order to win the race, but the execution was even better.

"The DRS train was a nice idea, but to execute it in that fashion was incredible. There might not be anyone else on the grid who’d have pulled it off."