Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were surprised at how competitive they were on the first day of the first race of the season in Bahrain, but also by the fact that the teams are so close to each other.
In the second free practice for the Bahrain GP, the first 15 drivers set the fastest laps within one second, and Sainz as the faster Ferrari driver was the fourth fastest with 0.280 seconds slower time than the fastest Verstappen.
Ferrari qualified for 11th and 12th place on this track last year, and the new SF21 is faster on the straights than its predecessor, which is crucial for the track with three long straights.
“Today has been a good day and maybe we didn’t expect to be as competitive,” said Leclerc.
“Though it’s still very early days for now, FP1 was positive on my side and FP2 a bit less. I’ve been struggling a little bit with the car rear end and didn’t manage to finish the lap I wanted to, but even though overall there’s still a lot of work to do I can feel there’s a lot of motivation in the team and I can see and feel the improvements that have been made since last year. This is good for now.”
“Tomorrow will be the day when we’ll know exactly where we are compared to the others as this is when everyone will push to the limit; everything will be clear in qualifying.”
“Even though we expect the usual cars will still be at the front, the field is very very tight and I think qualifying tomorrow will be very tight too but this is exciting and this is what we like as drivers to try and make the difference.”
Charles Lelcerc, Ferrari SF21 (Photo: Ferrari)
Sainz is happy with the first day of the new season with the new team, but is a bit surprised at how close the teams are to each other.
“Today we had very different conditions in the first and second sessions,” said Sainz.
“In FP1 everything felt fairly normal and going into FP2 the conditions changed quite a bit in terms of wind and obviously track temperature. It made the car and the balance trickier, and it brought the field together. We were surprised with how tight the short runs were in terms of performance.”
“Every lap I do with the car I get to understand it a bit better, how it behaves and how it adapts to the changing conditions. It takes some time, so it was important for me to have a clean Friday and complete our programme.”
“Tomorrow it could be a different story again, with different conditions, especially the wind, so we need to take it step by step, building up to Qualifying.”
