Carlos Sainz is concerned that Ferrari will face “a mission impossible” in its fight for the constructors’ championship unless it beats McLaren in today’s Qatar GP.
McLaren gained six points on the Maranello outfit in Saturday’s sprint race and can clinch the title today race if Ferrari has a bad race.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri start third and fourth, while Charles Leclerc is fifth, and Sainz seventh.
The Spaniard acknowledges that even it the title remains mathematically open heading to Abu Dhabi it could be beyond Ferrari’s reach.
He says that come what may the team has to beat McLaren, disregarding the fact that a Mercedes and a Red Bull start ahead of both teams and could potentially take the biggest haul of points.
“I don’t think it’s about third and fourth, I think it’s about recovering points on them,” said Sainz. “I think we just need to finish ahead of them and independently of the position.
“And of course, it’s good for us if they don’t win P1 and P2, but even if they finish P3 and P4 ahead of us, it’s still going to be almost mission impossible in Abu Dhabi. So it’s more than that.
“It would need to be a very, very big change of pace, because from going a couple of tenths off to being a couple of tenths in front to be able to overtake them, there needs to be a big swing in performance.
“But at we can least stay with them in the race, play with them with strategy and see the start, which is always to do the pit stop, and then see what can happen.”
He added: “So far, I think we’ve maximised everything. Today, I think I should have qualified P6 instead of P7, I went into the last lap of Q3 without a car in front, a tow in front. I don’t know why we were leading the pack, and that’s normally a couple of tenths in the straights for free. Probably missed a bit of that.
“At the same time, the 20.8 of Charles is the 20.8 that the car can more or less achieve. So far, I think we’re maximising everything, but maximising everything, as I said, might not be enough, or might be good enough.”
Sainz admitted that Ferrari struggled to switch on the soft tyres in qualifying.
“I think it’s just the type of corner,” he said when I asked about the team’s form. “You see the track, and we shouldn’t be very quick. And it just seems our through corner balance, overloading in the car in these long combined fifth, sixth gear corners, that doesn’t seem to be performing as well as it should.
“I think we’ve tried everything possible with a soft tyre to switch it on better. Faster, slower, out laps, anything you can imagine.
“And we just simply seem to be finding a bit of a hard limit with the lap time that that we could produce. Particularly with Charles, with the new floor, and also me with a bit of a more difficult session than yesterday.”
Sainz confirmed that the team made changes between the sprint race and qualifying.
“We definitely tried quite a few things, both on setup, but also in tyre preparation. But it just didn’t seem to change our fundamental issues.
“I think when you’re talking about tyre preparation, you’re talking about the last tenth, when you’re like three or four tenths and you see all the medium speed corners, you’re just lacking minimum speeds and a bit of through corner balance, and you realise that maybe just it’s not quite in there.
“But anything can happen still tomorrow, a lot of people also there in the front to upset a bit the order. So I think we can still have a good day.”
Adam Cooper F1 