Carlos Sainz will be over the moon with how his national team have begun the 2022 Qatar World Cup, with Spain avoiding a potential upset in their opening game against Costa Rica with a comprehensive thrashing.
Football fans have already been treated to massive upsets this World Cup, with Argentina and Germany losing their opening games to Saudi Arabia and Japan respectively.
Despite looking to have a below par squad by Spain’ standards, goals from Dani Olmo, Marco Asensio, Carlos Soler and Alvaro Morata completed a demolition of Costa Rica, who stunned the world with an impressive run during the 2014 edition of the tournament.
While Pierre Gasly made a bizarre appearance on French TV for Les Bleus’ opening World Cup game against Australia, most of the drivers are still in Abu Dhabi as they took part in a post-season test earlier this week.
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The tests gave each team’s car one final run out and handed drivers such as Fernando Alonso a chance to drive for their new team for the first time.
Charles Leclerc must have agreed to watch Spain’s opening match with his teammate Carlos Sainz, however not being a Spaniard himself he evidently found the trashing somewhat boring as Costa Rica failed to lay a glove on Spain.
The Monegasque driver has now been exposed by his teammate for drifting off during the game, with Sainz posting a video of Leclerc asleep next to him during the game to his six million Instagram followers.
The video was posted in good spirits as the pair have formed a strong bond during their two seasons together at Ferrari, even achieving a one-two finish in Bahrain at the start of the season.
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Sainz has admitted that it took him time to adapt to the Ferrari car, having to change elements of his driving style to get the best performance out of himself.
In the latter stages of the season the Spaniard began to match the lap times of his teammate as has said that he finally feels as if he is on the level of Leclerc and able to challenge him in 2023.
The 28-year-old has had cursed luck in 2022, being forced to retire from a number of races due to the actions of other drivers, so he will hope that he can carry his strong form into 2023 along with some better luck, to challenge his teammate in the championship.