Carlos Sainz has claimed that the expectations surrounding the expected progress from Ferrari’s Formula 1 upgrades at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix were inflated.
Following an encouraging opening to the campaign, Ferrari has introduced a considerable update package this weekend as it bid to close the gap further on Red Bull.
But while the marque exhibited promising signs through practice as Charles Leclerc topped the first two sessions, Ferrari slipped back and qualified in fourth and fifth.
However, Sainz is adamant that Ferrari’s developments have delivered the predicted gains from the internal simulations and reports elsewhere had been exaggerative.
“It’s worked exactly as we expected,” Sainz stated. “Unfortunately, I don’t know, for some reason everybody expected us to be flying this weekend with the new package.
“I’ve been seeing numbers of our package going around that were completely out of reality nowadays, already to bring 0.1s is [a] good job by the team.
“I’m not saying we brought 0.1s, 0.2s or 0.05s, but it is not the numbers people were mentioning.
“And with that in mind, it was always going to be difficult to make the jump this weekend because people are also upgrading their cars here.”
Sainz suspects that Ferrari will transpire to be a more competitive proposition with its upgraded car on circuits which don’t expose the SF-24’s inherent shortcomings.
Asked to correct those earlier presumptions in the media and reveal whether the number was within reach of that mentioned realiti: Sainz responded: “I’m not allowed.
“But by telling you the numbers are out of proportion I am telling you enough and you can unlock the puzzle yourself, I think.
“Still the car is better than what it was in Miami, we measure more downforce and everything is working well. It’s just not enough yet for a circuit that is not favouring our car.
“When I saw the track, I always thought in the simulator that Imola would be a McLaren track and potentially also a Red Bull track.
Due to the lead time required to go through the various processes involved in assembling new car parts, Ferrari’s package was in the works prior to the season’s start.
With the SF-24’s weakness in slow-speed corners having become apparent in the nascent rounds, Sainz is hoping Ferrari can now begin to tackle the remaining flaws.
“That is a good positive [the upgrade direction] and another positive is we know exactly where are weakness is in these sorts of corners I was mentioning,” he added.
“Now hopefully we can focus on upgrading the car to improve those weaknesses.
“Another thing we need to focus is the soft tyre, we have been a bit up and down this year with the soft tyre and that sector one, as I said, puzzled me a bit.
