The first victory of the season for Ferrari came in Singapore, on a friendly track, and at the hands of Carlos Sainz who took advantage of the moment of total blackout for Red Bull, far from even the podium. The Spaniard comes from his second consecutive success, after third place in Monza and wants to continue this positive streak. A new fund has arrived in Suzuka to help the team, valued at FP1 da Leclerc and in FP2 from Sainz. Although this does not drastically change the aerodynamics of the SF-23, which pays off in comparison with the RB19, it can be a key element in the fight for the podium. So let's see Sainz's statements at the end of the first day of testing in Suzuka.
Sainz, positive on Friday in Suzuka
Although Ferrari is not among the favorites in Suzuka, it left some positive results on Friday. The team tried different solutions in order to find the final set-up. A job not so much of correction as of perfection given that recently we have seen how important it is not to leave anything out, especially in qualifying where pole positions are played out on the edge of a thousandth. In Singapore, this made the difference between Sainz's victory and Leclerc's fourth place. In Suzuka, however, the situation is completely opposite, and greater attention will be on degradation during the race. A problem that all the teams, some more, some less, encountered in the first days of free practice. Although Red Bull has shown that it can restore its superiority, the data obtained by Ferrari is encouraging.
“It seems that we are very close with our usual rivals but that we have returned to the scenario of a few races ago against a very strong Red Bull again – commented Sainz at the end of the first day of testing in Suzuka – with my engineers we are refining the car's set-up and today we tried different set-up adjustments to find the right compromise on this circuit. There is a lot of data to analyze and tonight we will decide how to lap tomorrow, trying to put the car in the right performance window. We have a couple of very intense days ahead of us."
A tight challenge with Red Bull ahead
The scenario that awaits us in Suzuka is therefore unpredictable and the real answers will come tomorrow with qualifying where Sainz expects different opponents to compete with. “It's nice to see that we're just behind Max's Red Bull, but I think the real battle in qualifying will be with McLaren, and to date we have done a good job. Even though it is difficult to understand these sessions, simply because we have made some changes, now our goal will be to put everything we have tried together in order to be able to count on the car that I hope to have for this weekend."
Source statements: FormulaPassion
