Despite Red Bull’s one-two finish in the season-opening race, Carlos Sainz Jnr took encouragement from how close he finished behind Sergio Perez.
The Ferrari driver took the final podium position in the first race of the season, 25 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen but just under three seconds off the second Red Bull.
After and overtaking George Russell and twice passing his Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc, Sainz says the feels a lot happier with the start of the 2024 season than he did with many races last year.
“I’m very happy,” Sainz said. “When we were at the car launch, I remember saying ‘this year, I hope I had a car to overtake and not to defend’. Last year, I spent my whole year defending.
“We arrive to the first race and I am attacking and making overtakes, which makes me happy. It’s been a while since I’ve been on the move.”
While recognising there is still a big gap between Ferrari and Verstappen in particular, Sainz said the performance of his new car shows the team are heading in the right direction.
“I’m happy with the overtakes, with the race pace,” he said. “Keeping up with Checo there at the end wasn’t easy, but we managed. Still a long way to go to beat Max, but it’s true that we’re also at the toughest circuit on rear tyres, which we know that for our car is never the best.
“Also because I feel we were just in that distance – two or three seconds – that you cannot properly show your pace because you are in dirty air. So I think we were very close on pace to Checo today, which means big steps forward.
“It also shows there’s a long way to go to beat Max. But at least we overtook people, we didn’t overheat the tyres, we didn’t degrade. It was it was fun out there, I truly enjoyed it.”
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2024 Bahrain Grand Prix
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