For some races, Ferrari has been widely surpassed by Red Bull, especially in race pace, since in qualifying they have managed to fight for pole position with Max Verstappen, while on Sundays the difference widens considerably.
In the Maranello team they have recognized in recent weeks that they were investigating the reason why they are not able to be equally competitive in qualifying and in the race, but as Carlos Sainz explained in the run-up to the Italian Grand Prix, they still do not have an answer .
The Spanish driver, who in addition to being affected by the poor race pace of the F1-75, has also seen how decision-making in the pits has cost him several points, analyzed the current situation of the Italian team: “I think that in general, As a team, we weren’t as strong in the race as we would have liked.”
“Whether that’s the fault of the tyres, is it because the other teams have improved recently with the updates, or is it simply because we haven’t optimized the car set-up to the fullest, that’s obviously something we’re going to look into this week.”
“Personally, I took some damage after the contact with Lewis Hamilton, and that probably had an effect on my race. That is why it is possible that I was not as competitive as I was in the simulations on Friday.
“But I think the problem is much bigger than that, and we were definitely not as competitive as we would have liked. We will do some testing to find out and see if we can get some pace back for the next few races,” added the Spaniard.
For this weekend, Carlos Sainz could be even more affected because all the rumors suggest that Ferrari will change the power unit of his car, incurring a penalty that will drop him to the bottom of the grid.
Speaking about it, the Spanish driver recognized that Monza was the ideal circuit to make this power unit change, since the Italian track offers more opportunities for overtaking than the rest of the circuits, and he prayed for the “help” of the rest of the drivers .
“It seems that we are going to change. Hopefully a lot more people change, like in Spa, so as not to start last and do it 15th or 16th, like Verstappen and Leclerc in Belgium. It would be a great help, so let’s see if that is the case”, Sainz concluded.
