After viewing Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc’s performance on Friday, Carlos Sainz confessed he felt “a more down” carrying a grid penalty into the Turkey Formula One weekend.
Ferrari stated before of the race weekend at Istanbul Park that Sainz would start from the back of the grid on Sunday after the team replaced his hybrid system with an all-new power unit.
Sainz spent his Friday practice sessions focusing on race pace in preparation for Sunday’s grand prix, but Leclerc raced to second position on the timesheets in FP2, finishing less than two tenths of a second behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton.
While Sainz still liked the challenge of fighting through the field in Turkey, he said that he was “tiny bit less” enthused after seeing what Leclerc could do.
“Now I see where Charles is in the low fuel, and you see that he could be fighting for a podium, it makes me [feel] a bit of a regret [for] the fact that I’m not going to be there on Saturday to fight for it and on Sunday to fight for it, unless I do a huge comeback that is obviously quite unlikely,” Sainz said.
“It just makes me feel a bit more down, just because I wish I could be up there with him fighting for higher places, looking at where the pace of the car is this weekend.”
Sainz promised to “keep the faith” that he could “have some fun going through the field” to score points, but he added that he “would much rather be in the top five in qualification and in the race.”
The high grip levels in Turkey may work in Ferrari’s favor, allowing the team to increase front-end downforce, which helped Leclerc reach second in FP2.
This season, the Monegasque driver has won two pole positions, topping qualifying in Monaco and Azerbaijan after a strong practice performance.
However, Leclerc was wary of reading too much from his performance in Turkey on Friday, feeling the top teams still had more pace to find.
“The feeling has been good all day, but we shouldn’t get carried away because I feel like the top teams have more to show,” Leclerc said.
“Also on high fuel it’s been looking good. So everything looks positive for now, but again, it’s only Friday.
“So for now I want to keep my head down, keep working as hard as we can to try and fine tune the car to have a perfect quali tomorrow.”
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