Sainz: Ferrari's upgrade expectations were 'overhyped' ahead of Imola

IMOLA, Italy -- Despite the anticipation, Ferrari's latest car upgrades yielded performance improvements that were in line with team expectations, but not enough to surpass Red Bull or McLaren during the qualifying session for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.

In the backdrop of McLaren's impressive performance in Miami, Ferrari entered their home turf at Imola armed with seven performance-boosting upgrades, including redesigned sidepods and a new floor. Speculations on social media suggested that these enhancements could shave off as much as 0.4 seconds per lap, potentially putting Ferrari in direct contention with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull for pole position.

However, Carlos Sainz, who secured fifth place in qualifying, 0.487 seconds behind Verstappen, dismissed these lofty predictions.

"It's worked exactly as we expected," Sainz stated. "Unfortunately, I don't know, for some reason everybody expected us to be flying this weekend with the new package. I've been seeing numbers of our package going around that were completely out of reality nowadays -- already to bring 0.1s is good job by the team. I'm not saying we brought 0.1s, 0.2s or 0.05s, but it is not the numbers people were mentioning. And with that in mind, it was always going to be difficult to make the jump this weekend because people are also upgrading their cars here."

Charles Leclerc, who qualified fifth and was 0.224 seconds off Verstappen remained optimistic about future improvements.

"We cannot be fully happy of course, but one thing that is good is that the upgrade is doing exactly what is expected," Leclerc commented. "So that is always a good sign, but on a track like this maybe we haven't seen yet all the benefits of the upgrade and we came short of our target which was to be on pole position. We need to wait and see a few races before judging the upgrades because we might not be running in the optimum window for this new package and all of this. So I'm sure there is more potential to unlock. Was today worse than expected? Probably a little bit, we expected to be a bit closer, however a season is still long, we still have plenty of ideas on how to extract more from this package and I'm sure we will in the next few races and it will be crucial for the rest of the season."

Sainz acknowledged that McLaren currently holds the upper hand over Ferrari in single-lap performance but hinted that this dynamic could change with upcoming races in Monaco and Canada, which have different track characteristics.

"McLaren had it [an advantage in qualifying] in Miami, it's just on the soft tyre they struggled in Miami," Sainz noted. "If you saw the lap times they were doing on mediums in sprint quali and the race especially, they were 0.2s or 0.3s faster than us and then we come to a McLaren circuit, which is Imola. It was always going to be difficult to beat McLaren around here, they were a 0.1s ahead of Charles and 0.3s ahead with me. So I was pretty sure it was always going to be a McLaren track and hopefully there will come Ferrari tracks where we can challenge them."

As the F1 season progresses, Ferrari remains focused on maximizing their new upgrades and closing the gap to their competitors.

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