Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz has shot down suggestions that the Maranello team are one of the strongest Formula 1 teams in this stage of the season, according to the pace and performance shown in the first pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya.
The Italian side has covered more laps than any other team in the first two days at the Montmelo track, with Carlos Sainz and team mate Charles Leclerc consistently towards the top of the timing screens. This made Mercedes driver George Russell state that Ferrari are looking “very, very competitive”.
Yet Carlos Sainz does not agree with suggested that the Maranello team seemed to have enjoyed a far better start to the testing session as compared to its rivals:
“Why do you believe we look in great shape? I mean, this is very early days and I can imagine why you guys were starting to take conclusions and maybe try to put up a bit of a pecking order. But for us, really, we have no clue. I think no one has a clue what fuel loads, which elements are everyone running. So we cannot confirm or deny that we are happy or sad because we really don’t know where we are at all. I think Bahrain, maybe it will start to get a bit easier to start to guess where everyone is.” – the Spanish driver explained.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection from Puma!
Given the completely different rules and technical regulations for the new F1 championship, cars behave remarkably different compared to the last season and the Ferrari driver admitted he is enjoying the challenge of understanding and getting to grips with the heavily revised new single-seaters:
“The cars are quite a bit different to last year. You are faced with different challenges when you drive them. I am enjoying it quite a lot, to be fair. The whole process of having to feel it, having to put it on the limit and see how the car reacts to different inputs. There’s certainly quite big differences out there, but the muscle memory of the driver just adapts very quickly. We just know how to drive a little bit in a different way and the car just asks you to do some different things and we just do it. And that learning process and this challenge, it’s just good fun to go through it. So in that sense an exciting pre-season testing because it’s different to anything else I’ve done before.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz explained.
Leave a Reply