Carlos Sainz warns Red Bull have ‘killed everyone’ as unwanted Ferrari anniversary approaches

Carlos Sainz was behind the wheel the last time Ferrari took a race victory almost exactly a year ago, and he reminded people that Red Bull have simply “killed everyone” with their pace in that time since.

Sainz took his maiden win in Formula 1 at the British Grand Prix at the start of last July, before Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc followed that up with victory in Austria the following week.

With Formula 1 returning to the scene of the Scuderia’s last win this weekend, Red Bull have won all but one of the races since, with only Mercedes driver George Russell’s victory at Interlagos breaking their streak of P1 finishes.

Carlos Sainz: Red Bull have “killed the opposition” in past year

The ongoing dominance of Red Bull straddling the 2022 and 2023 campaigns has coincided with Sainz admitting that Ferrari have also fallen away from the pace, with the Scuderia having started last season on terms with their rivals.

With the RB19 looking a world apart from the rest of the field at the beginning of 2023, work is ongoing from Ferrari and others to try and reel in Max Verstappen and the dominant Red Bull team that have taken eight wins out of eight so far this season.

Ferrari have had their own transition behind the scenes with the arrival of Fred Vasseur as team principal over the winter, but Sainz acknowledged that, as a calendar year is coming up since the Scuderia’s last win, Red Bull have “killed everyone” in their way.

“Yeah. Also a year since I nearly got burned,” Sainz quipped to reporters, referencing his fiery power unit failure in Austria in 2022, when he was reminded that a year is approaching since Ferrari last took a race victory.

“But yeah, It’s been a long year for sure, and I think from Austria last year until now, it’s been tough.

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“We had a bit of a dip in form towards the end of last year in race pace and then we carried that, let’s say, difficult moment into this year and we are in exactly the turning point, or in the point of where we are trying to turn things around to make the car competitive again and to try and win again.

“It’s not going to be easy because there’s another team called Red Bull that have killed everyone, killed the opposition in a way, no? And we’re not the only ones suffering it.

“There’s teams also, like Mercedes, that have suffered their good job, and it’s down to us now to revert it and to try our best to win again.”

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