Carlos Sainz is one of the pilots of the grill with more fondness for physical exercise and before a season in which the condition of each pilot will be crucial for competition, it has undergone a training programme as I had never before experienced.
And it is that, as he himself recognizes, is being “the toughest winter” of your life. But to tame the cars of 2017, which will be around three seconds faster than last year and, therefore, will cause some G-forces in curves far superior, it is necessary to reach a state so superior to that of any other season. “it Will be much more hard to drive, so the training that we have been doing in previous years would not be useful. Instead of the 50 minutes that usually last (sessions of crossfit), mine are an hour and a half or two, in which we work to 180-190 beats and which also included boxing and working cardio. You can’t stop doing things during all that time,”, says the Spanish pilot Toro Rosso.
Although this is not only to work with the resistance of the neck-the body part that suffers most from the G-forces in the curves-is the main muscle group to work and Sainz does so in several ways. “We have two ways of working the neck. First work with weights in the gym, which is similar to what we do on the track and, second, with specific methods in karting, two or three times a week. The weight makes my helmet between 1.5 and 2 kg heavier, which translates to G-forces similar to those that I feel in my F1 car. This is only one of a group of exercises that I’m doing to work my neck”.
The Spanish, who today is 22 years old, thinks that it is in the fullness of his physical form, but on the other hand does not have the experience of having raced single-seaters so demanding. “I Think you reach your best physical shape when you’re 21 or 22 years old and should be good, But on the other hand, some drivers such as Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton or Kimi Räikkönen have already experienced in 2005, 2006 and 2007 G-forces similar to those that we will have this year”.
The pilots are already in the final stage of their preparation, as spring practice will begin just over two weeks at the circuit of Barcelona.
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