Having started the season as the closest challenger to Red Bull, Ferrari has fallen behind quite a bit in the latter part of the first half of the season. Carlos Sainz was asked about the Ferrari’s recent upgrades during the build-up to the Hungarian Grand Prix, and he was understandably unhappy about them.
Sainz recalled Ferrari being the second-best team at the start of the season and even having opportunities to beat Red Bull. The Spaniard himself took victory in Australia where Verstappen had to retire due to rear brake issues. But he admits that the upgrades have brought them down to maybe the third or fourth-best team overall.
Ferrari is 71 points behind Red Bull (and Leclerc is 105 off Verstappen).
But the Monegasque expects his team to rejoin the fight with Red Bull and McLaren “as soon as we maximise the potential of our upgrades”, as he feels it’s just “0.2s” making the difference pic.twitter.com/kEup2MhqFV
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Speaking to F1 presenter Laura Winter about the recent upgrades, Sainz said, “We started the year as the second-best Force, we went through a patch where we were even sometimes looking the quickest you know, there in Monaco and now we are the third or fourth fastest team depending on the track. So as a team, we are not happy”.
The 29-year-old stated that the Maranello team is doing everything “to revert the situation”. He added, “This weekend we might have done a small step in the right direction but we still have a long way to go if we want to get back to fighting for pole positions”.
After Charles Leclerc won the Monaco GP, Ferrari just haven’t been in contention for race wins and poles. Meanwhile, Leclerc has endured a wretched run of form with reliability issues and lowly points finishes. This has frustrated the Monegasque a lot and he is not hiding it.
Leclerc left frustrated with the lack of performance from Ferrari
Ferrari’s upgrade package at the Spanish Grand Prix took them down the wrong development path. While they did achieve higher downforce levels, it was also accompanied by the dreaded porpoising in fast corners. The Italian outfit has since been trying to undo the effects of these upgrades and that has cost them crucial development time.
Both Sainz and Leclerc have acknowledged that their fight in the Hungarian Grand Prix is with Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton instead of the McLarens and Max Verstappen. In his post-qualifying interview, Leclerc noted, “P6 is not a result I am happy with… Overall, we have to work on regaining the pace we had at the start of the season”.
Even in the build-up to the Grand Prix, Leclerc maintained that the best he can hope is to finish ahead of the Mercedes, “Our realistic target for today is P4 and P5, McLarens are way too far ahead. The fight will probably be with Lewis”.
