F1 | Sainz: “The numbers circulating on the new package were out of reality”

Carlos Sainz is disappointed, but not surprised. The potential shown by Ferrari with the new technical package introduced in Imola had deluded itself during free practice, but apparently not the Spanish driver, who did not say he was surprised to have finished qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix only in fifth place.

According to the son of art, in fact, the track on the banks of the Santerno has characteristics that are more congenial to other cars than the SF-24, McLaren above all (even if the pole was once again signed by Max Verstappen with the Red Bull). With gaps as small as those seen today, however, it is inevitable that there may also be a bit of regret.

“Honestly, I’m not surprised. This is a circuit suited to McLaren and Red Bull, with high-speed and medium-speed corners. Our strengths are others and today the wind didn’t help us in several corners,” said Sainz. to the microphones of Sky Sport F1.

“It was a very tight qualifying, because we were only at two tenths. The problem is that with this regulation it is very difficult to find these two tenths. Indeed, we also brought a new package, but we know that there will be circuits suitable for us and others less so. For me this has always been a McLaren circuit from the beginning,” he added.

The Cavallino driver then explained that the wind also complicated the plans, changing direction, pushing on the rear at some key points of the track. And this continues to be a weakness of the SF-24, even with the new package.

“When there is the wind pushing us on the rear there are turns like turns 2 and 3 where our car struggles a lot. Turn 7 was also very difficult for us today and yesterday it was the one where we were the most fast there too yesterday we had the wind in our faces and today we had it at our back and it complicated things. This shows that we are still a little too sensitive from this point of view, that we need to improve, but the package we have brought here was not specific to that,” he explained.

Then he focused on the technical innovations introduced this weekend, which in his opinion had generated too much enthusiasm: “It worked exactly as we expected. For some reason everyone expected that this weekend we would fly with the new package. I saw numbers of our package were going around that were completely out of reality.”

“Nowadays already bringing home a tenth is a good job by the team. I’m not saying that we brought one, two or half a tenth. But not the numbers we were talking about. Taking this into account, it would always have been It’s difficult to make a leap in quality this weekend, because the others are also updating their cars,” he continued.

When he was then asked what the objective could be for tomorrow, he concluded: “I think we can challenge for the podium. Starting fourth or fifth (Oscar Piastri could be penalized for impeding in front of him), for the victory we would need help like Norris in Miami, because it’s not easy to overtake here. But I think we’ll fight for the podium.”