Carlos Sainz admitted it’s “easy to be confident” before Formula 1 pre-season testing, but believes that his Ferrari team can fight for more grand prix victories in 2024.
The Spanish driver got his first few kilometres in the SF-24 Tuesday via a small shakedown at the Maranello-based squad’s Fiorano test circuit prior to winter testing.
While Sainz addressed that his debut run in the car “went smoothly”, he admitted that the current testing period in Bahrain would give Ferrari a gauge of where it’s at.
“I think it’s easy, no, to be confident and positive at this time of the year,” Sainz said when speaking to media including Motorsport Week at Ferrari’s 2024 car launch.
“No-one has seen each other’s cars on-track, no-one has seen lap times, and I always like being positive and encouraged going into a new season.
“I’m also positive and encouraged because I’ve seen the amount of work everyone has put into this car, I’ve seen the mentality and the work ethic behind it, and I like the working method that we’ve had in Ferrari over the past six months, eight months, 10 months developing this car.”
A winner and early title contender in 2022, Ferrari was unable to mount a similar challenge last year, with its SF-23 proving to be a difficult car for its drivers to handle.
This has prompted a change in direction with the SF-24, with Technical Director Enrico Cardile previously stating that it represents “a completely new platform.”
“Whether it suits my style? Impossible to say,” Sainz added when asked if the new car will cater to his driving needs better.
“We want the car to be more drivable, we want the car to give us less bad moments, less tricky moments on-track, a bit easier on tyres, a better race car in general.
“And hopefully that means better results.
“And the driving, I don’t mind so much, it will adapt to whatever it is the car is doing, and I will drive it as fast as possible.”
Sainz was able to pick up the solitary non-Red Bull win in 2023 with a cunning drive in Singapore and while he expects the Milton Keynes-based outfit to be “super strong” once again in 2024, he’s targeting adding more to that tally this coming season.
“Regarding this year I wish that we can achieve more than one win, I think that’s the target in the whole team including me,” he outlined.
“I think we’ve done everything we can to close that gap to Red Bull, and even though Red Bull is going to come out super strong, I think Ferrari is capable of closing that gap and putting ourselves in a position of fighting for more wins.
“Whether we get them or not, let’s wait a little bit until Bahrain, let’s wait until the first race, see how competitive we are and then I’ll be able to tell you how many wins I think we can achieve this season.”
An oft-cited Achilles heel for Ferrari is its ability to manage a race situation, with plenty calling the team’s strategy decisions into question over recent years.
However, Sainz feels races such as Singapore show the team has matured in this aspect and is confident this will benefit them across the upcoming season.
“It is true there needed be some progress leading up to 2023 with how we were managing the races,” he said.
“But I feel like towards the end of 2023, and Singapore is a perfect example, there was a very good communication between me, my engineer, the pit wall, the strategy, the mechanics, the pit stops.
“I think there was no weakness there toward the end of the year and I feel like we can keep building on that form and being a strong team, not only in terms of speed but in terms of executing good races. So I’m confident on that.”
It wasn’t just from an operational standpoint where Sainz saw improvement in 2023, with the Spaniard pointing out how it was able to recover from a technical aspect by developing a troublesome SF-23 out of the gate into a stronger contender by the denouement of last term.
Ferrari carried its ‘bathtub’ sidepod solution from 2022 into ’23 and found out it had limitations with that concept, but it was in identifying those weaknesses and switching to the preferred ‘downwash’ sidepod solution that resulted in the Scuderia’s better run of form as the year closed out, leading ultimately to Sainz’s success in Singapore.
Meanwhile, Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc endured a race-long fight with Red Bull in Las Vegas and the Monegasque scooped three pole positions in the last five rounds.
“I think we were very agile last year in identifying the weaknesses of last year’s car, and we’ve put all of our focus in trying to correct them, whether this year we will manage to do so and it will be enough to be as competitive as we would like to be, this is yet to be seen,” Sainz added.
“I am definitely feeling like we managed to identify our weaknesses well last year, we managed to develop well through the year, so hopefully that good work and understanding is going to translate and carry forward to this year’s car.
“That’s what everyone hopes, and obviously me included, but we still need to check it on track.
“And even if it’s not as much as we would like and we still have some things to improve I am hoping that the direction and the leadership will still be in a positive way.”
