Carlos Sainz has insisted that Ferrari must “accept” that they’re not currently in a position to fight for victories, with the Italians finding themselves in the battle from P3-P8.
It’s been a mixed 2023 campaign for Sainz, who’s shown incredible consistency but has lacked outright pace.
As a result, he’s yet to finish on the podium this season, whereas Charles Leclerc has claimed three.
The Monegasque on the whole has been quicker than Sainz, but he’s also been more unpredictable.
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Whilst Sainz might sit seven points behind Leclerc in the Drivers’ Championship, Ferrari have been able to depend on the Spaniard to score points and bring the car home.
The Maranello-based side have fallen backwards from their 2022 highs, which saw them take the fight to Red Bull in the early stages of the season.
With Red Bull having cleared off into the distance, and with Mercedes, Aston Martin and McLaren having improved, next to nothing separates third to P10.
Ferrari and Sainz have discovered that this season, with very little time often separating the leading teams behind Red Bull.
“It’s been obviously relatively a frustrating start when we kind of realised that Red Bull was such a big step ahead of us and it was going to be difficult to challenge them,” Sainz explained, as reported by Motorsport.com.
“I think we all expected the car to be more competitive, ourselves to be more competitive and the field has got really, really tight.
“Now you’re going through these massive up and downs where some weekends you might be fighting for P3 and others you’re just finishing P8, which in performance swing just might mean you are 0.1s in front missing or 0.1s behind that tight field, which is not a lot.
“But the end result looks very different in Ferrari when you come back with a P3 or P8. And now we just need to kind of accept that’s the fight that we are in.
“If one weekend we need to go and fight for P5 and that’s the maximum we can do, we need to celebrate the fact that we’ve done the maximum with what we have this year.
Sainz says that the team must stop putting pressure on itself to promise results that it cannot deliver, and divert its focus on conducting its duties over a race weekend in the correct manner.
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He says that this will allow the team to build up its haul of points in the constructors’ championship where it currently sits fourth, but only five points behind Aston Martin ahead.
“[We need to] focus more on maximising the car’s potential, and the team’s performance in this second half of the season,” the Spaniard added.
“We want to make sure we maximise our constructor points, stop kind of expecting a win or a podium, and just focus on nailing the principles and be consistent.”