Race day in Saudi Arabia just over a fortnight ago a certain Spaniard gingerly walked into the Formula 1 paddock, a day after an appendectomy, to watch the race unfold from the back of the Ferrari garage, now Carlos Sainz is a three-time Grand Prix winner courtesy of a sterling display in Australia.
For mere mortals, a fortnight recovery from invasive surgery to strapping into a bespoke single-seater race car capable of pulling several G through flat-out corners is out of the question, but of course, F1 drivers are high-performing athletes.
Sainz was able to draw on expert advice and recovery regimes to ensure he was in the best position possible to operate at a high level in Australia.
His tactics paid off with a Grand Prix win, one that was relatively unchallenged thanks to Max Verstappen’s early retirement and post-race Sainz outlined what he did to recover from his surgery in Jeddah.
“As soon as I got my appendix removed, I went on the internet and started talking with professionals and said, ‘OK, what helps to speed up recovery?’
“Obviously from that point onwards, I started doing all the sort of things you can do to speed up recovery, the wounds, the scar tissue, what you can help to be faster on that, talking to other athletes, talking to other doctors in Spain, internationally.”
Sainz reasoned that athletes have the ability to recover faster than the average person due to having the freedom to dedicate themselves 24/7 to do so.
“I put together a plan with my team,” he said.
“The reason why athletes recover faster is because you can dedicate your 24 hours per day for seven days to recovery and that’s exactly what I did.
“I started going to hyperbaric chambers twice a day for one hour, taking an Indiba machine that is an electromagnetic thing for the wounds.
“I was programming my time in bed, my time to go for a walk, my time to eat, the kind of food that you have to have to recover. Just everything was centered around recovery to try to be ready for Australia.”
Still, Sainz found the first week of his recovery didn’t show positive results and he grew concerned regarding his ability to compete at Albert Park.
However, in the build-up to the Australian Grand Prix things changed rapidly in a positive direction as experts told Sainz it would.
One of those experts was Williams’ Alex Albon, who had his appendix removed during the 2022 Italian Grand Prix weekend and had to perform a similar recovery plan ahead of that season’s follow-up race in Singapore.
“Nine days ago, I was about to catch the flight to come to Australia, I was still in bed, I could barely use my abdominal to move,” Sainz said.
“I was like, ‘this is not going to happen.’
“But I took the flight and suddenly when I landed in Australia, the feeling was a lot better.
“Every 24 hours, I was making a lot more progress than the first seven days, which is actually what all the doctors and all the professional people told me.
“‘Don’t worry, because the second week, every day is going to improve a lot more than the first week.’
“And even Alex Albon told me this, I remember. So it just followed more or less what everyone told me and I put together a good plan.”
