Watch: Sainz Openly Reflects On First Day Of Testing In Bahrain

Wednesday, 21 February 2024 at 19:45

Scuderia Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz commented on the first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain with SF-24 (Ferrari's 2024 challenger).

Both Ferrari drivers took turns behind the steering wheel of SF-24 today. Charles Leclerc was the first one during the morning session, and Carlos Sainz got his chance during the evening session.

The Spanish driver put in the third fastest lap of the session - 1:32.584. In comparison, he was one tenth of a second slower than Lando Norris on McLaren in second place and more than one second slower than Max Verstappen on Red Bull in the first place.

Some other teams, like Mercedes or Williams, struggled with reliability issues during the day, but the 29-year-old completed 69 laps without major difficulties.

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Ferrari shared a video on its social media X (formerly known as Twitter) where Sainz summed up the whole day in a few short sentences. He said:

"First day pushing the car a bit more and testing. Always feels good; I think it was a really good day for the team because we did the program as we expected."

As Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said, 2024 isn't at all a transition year for Ferrari. The team has ambitions of fighting for more race wins and possibly the title this year.

While the Scuderia lacked more than a second on Red Bull today, the times are not really representative as the two teams ran different simulations, car setups, and fuel loads.

Being one second down on their rival already on the first day of testing doesn't look too well for Ferrari, but the real comparison will come next Friday (March 1st) during the first qualifying session of the season. Sainz added:

"We did some long runs, too. We started to play around with the car, and it was a good test day. Honestly, we covered everything that we wanted, and we had a good first day, so now it's time to get our heads down and see how we can be faster and faster."