Although on the timesheets Ferrari had a good test in Spain, Carlos Sainz says they have “no clue” where they are in F1’s pecking order.
Ferrari impressed throughout last week’s group shakedown at the Circuit de Catalunya, setting headline-making lap times as the Scuderia and McLaren swapped P1s on the opening two days.
It all changed on day three as Mercedes and Red Bull came to the fore.
As they went for performance runs, Charles Leclerc dropped to P5 on the overall timesheets, half a second down on Lewis Hamilton, with Sainz a further 0.4s off the pace.
“I can imagine why you guys are starting to take conclusions and maybe try to put a bit of a pecking order,” the Spaniard said as per Autosport.
“But for us, really we have no clue, and I think no-one has no clue of which fuel loads [and] which engines modes is everyone running.
“So we cannot confirm or deny that we are happy or sad, because we really don’t know where we are at all.
“I think [in] Bahrain, maybe it will start to get a bit easier to start to guess where everyone is.”
Training hard ??#essereFerrari ? @Carlossainz55 pic.twitter.com/PpDjQcWGxQ
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) February 27, 2022
But while Ferrari didn’t top the overall timesheets, they were there on the lap count. The Scuderia team-mates covered 439 laps, 46 more than second-placed Mercedes.
Sainz says there is still a lot of work to be done in the build-up to the second and final pre-season outing in Bahrain.
One thing Ferrari, and most of their rivals, still need to solve is the porpoising that the new cars suffer on the straights.
“It’s time to work a bit more on not only the mileage, but it’s also trying to improve the porpoising, and if the car is reliable with it, which if course is tricky to do,” Sainz said.
“We’ll keep working on it, and we’ll see if we can keep getting better.”
Team boss Mattia Binotto feels they have already made inroads on that.
He said: “If we’re looking at this on Thursday afternoon and earlier on Friday, I think we are bouncing a lot less. And somehow we are managing the situation.
“We are happy, first because I think we have done a lot of laps.
“I think that now we will be back in Maranello before to go to Bahrain and we have a few days really to look at all the data and try somehow to optimise the current car.”
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