Carlos Sainz reflects on key Ferrari focus in testing amid Red Bull and Mercedes battle

Carlos Sainz reflects on key Ferrari focus in testing amid Red Bull and Mercedes battle. Carlos reflects on key Ferrari focus in testing.

The first session of Friday testing at the Bahrain International Circuit ended with the fastest time of Carlos Sainz, the first driver to bring a non-Red Bull car to the top of the standings in these pre-season tests. With a best lap time of 1’32.486, the Spaniard from Ferrari completed his morning session with a total of 70 laps, but that didn’t completely erase the concerns of the Prancing Horse fans regarding some problems that emerged especially on Thursday.

A concern that remained above all after the comments of Carlos Sainz in his recent interview for Sky Sport F1, in particular following the question asked to the Spaniard about the feelings of optimism or pessimism ahead of the new Formula 1 world championship in terms of Ferrari’s prospects of challenging Red Bull for the titles:

“I honestly don’t know – he explained – and I don’t know how fast or slow we are. We’re certainly not slow, but how fast compared to Red Bull or Mercedes I don’t know.(It’s been) smooth, very smooth. To be honest, I’m quite happy with how we’ve able to run, the quantity of tests that we have managed to do over these first few days, exploring the limits of the setup, trying to put the car in different places and learning a lot from it, which is a target that I had from last year that I know we couldn’t do, and this year so far I’m managing to do it.” – the Spanish driver explained.

“It feels like an evolution of last year. It feels very similar to drive and there hasn’t been major changes going on in the car or the concept, so trying to improve the good pace that we had last year and obviously now putting our focus on our weaknesses of last year. Whenever I jump in the car I push, but realistically the last tenth, or the last bit of pushing, you don’t bring it until qualifying with adrenaline and everything, but tomorrow, hopefully little by little I will start building the pace.” – Carlos Sainz concluded, during the launch break on Friday, as the Spaniard will be back on track on Saturday to complete the Maranello team’s testing programme in Bahrain.