Sainz points out Ferrari's "priority" in these 2022 F1 tests

Scuderia Ferrari arrived at the Sakhir International Circuit as the favorite after the first pre-season tests in Barcelona that left high hopes for the Italian team.

From the first moment on the track, the Ferrari F1-75 proved to be a fast and constant single-seater, a very positive sign that pointed even more to the structure of Maranello . However, there is one problem that is still plaguing them.

Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz spoke before the media present at Sakhir , including Motorsport.com, and analyzed the first of three days of testing in Bahrain , the last before the season starts next weekend.

The driver from Madrid acknowledged that it is still impossible to have a clear idea of how and where they are in terms of performance compared to the rest of the teams on the grid.

“We are still testing things, I am too busy to know where the others are, in an hour everything changes. Also, it is very difficult to draw conclusions in Bahrain, even when you are testing things where you want to get data. Here everything is complicated because it changes and evolves every half hour”.

After that, Carlos Sainz acknowledged that Ferrari is still fighting against the problems of the already famous porposing , something that has become the great objective of the Italian team in these last pre-season tests in Formula 1 2022.

“For us, the priority is to solve the problems that we have with the porposing to make the car a little more consistent, a little more manageable and comfortable for the driver.

“We are making updates, some modifications to the bottom of the car to see if we can reduce the effect without hurting performance too much. Some are working, most are going in the right direction, which shows that we are working well,” he added.

For one reason or another, the 2022 F1 cars look more complicated to control at Sakhir than they really did at Barcelona . Referring to those issues, Sainz had no problem explaining what is going on.

“Other years, a car that was nice in Barcelona, would transform when it arrived in Bahrain. If on top of that we add the fact that everything is new and these cars are stiffer in general, then that probably won’t help, that’s why we see many drivers making mistakes, blocks and constant corrections. In addition, these cars are very sensitive to the wind”, concluded the driver from Madrid.

Finally and speaking about the words of George Russell that pointed to Ferrari as the favorite team for F1 2022, Sainz was not very surprised: “I think it’s something typical of Mercedes, they always point to others and then in the first race they surpass If it was the first year they’ve done that stuff then maybe I’d believe them, but they’ve done it for the last five or six years and they’ve always crushed us in the first race, so as you can imagine I don’t believe them.”