Wednesday, May 7, 2025, 10:56
| Updated 12: 44h.
Formula 1 is a sport in which everything is measured at the millimeter. The triumph can be in a hundredth. Engineers, aerodynamic professionals and many other experts work so that cars obtain maximum performance. Then there are the pilots, in which the skill in driving is fundamental. But not only that: they have to take care of many other aspects, such as their physical preparation. Carlos Sainz, who plays now in Williams, has the services of Vizcaíno Xabier Artetxe, performance expressionman in Sky/INEOS for ten years.
Artetxe ended at the end of 2024 his relationship with the British squad and then received the call from Carlos Sainz’s team. They wanted the Biscayan to work with them: “He is enriching me a lot.” He states that preparing Williams pilot is “something completely different” to what he had been doing. “I am a lot, since I am also learning,” he admits in the podcast ‘under the jersey’.
The expression of INEOS feels “a lucky one” to be able to be part of Formula 1. “There are only twenty pilots and be able to work with one of them is a pride,” he says. Although for some it can be “shocking” that a cycling professional coupe of a pilot, Artetxe explains that in this sport “he is now trained with the bicycle.” In fact, it reveals that “sometimes I have complicated to get off the bike” to Sainz “to work other aspects.” The pilot has sometimes seen going out with Tadej Pogacar.
About Sainz says he is “very professional.” With him the physical part works. “I have no idea of everything behind” the motor world, admits Artetxe, who points out that cycling “has copied” aspects of formula 1 as in aerodynamics.
-The work of the Biscay professional in the team is that Sainz “can be 100% of his physical condition for an hour and a half” that lasts a test. “Being able to get entirely at the end of the race,” he says. Having good physical faculties can make “better decisions”, since it is “fundamental when you are 300 kilometers per hour.”
Sainz’s coach states that the physical state “can influence the nervous system being fatigued or not.” Artetxe explains that there are many conditions such as trips, schedules changes, heat, loss of body temperature … that influence the pilot. «A good decision can change the race. That is our function, ”he says.
The Biscay tries to transfer everything learned in cycling, such as food, training, altitude, weight management, “which is very important in the motor world.”
Although Artetxe is no longer in the professional world of cycling, he is still linked to him. “I am detoxifying the races, the bustle of the competition, but at home I see many races,” says the Biscay, who continues to carry the physical preparation of some professional cyclists and juniors.
