Carlos Sainz admits that he was way too careful on his debut with Ferrari Formula 1 team. He was cautious in driving for the first time in his Ferrari during season opening.
The Spaniard was reluctant to take any risks at the start of his career with the Italian team. He did not wanted to end up with DNF at this stage of the season.
The reserve driving restricted him during the start and had to lose positions. However, later during the race he finally started to take his form and recovered his position. He finished eighth while his team mate Charles Leclerc finished sixth.
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He had hoped for a better position with the new team. Nonetheless, he felt confident of his performance, which he exhibited to regain a better position.
“Overall it’s been a good weekend for me,” explained Sainz after the race. “Maybe the result itself is nothing special, but I think the weekend is stronger than the result feels in race circumstances and qualifying circumstances.
“I was a bit on the back foot after the first few laps, probably taking a bit of a cautious approach into my first few laps with Ferrari. I just wanted to make sure I finished this race.
“Once I managed to clear the two slower cars, the Aston and the Alpine, and I managed to get into clean air, I was actually very happy with the car and could extract the pace from the car.
“So a good first weekend. There will be time in the next 22 races to be a bit more aggressive at the start and to be a bit better in those first few laps. I still need to get a bit more out of the car.”
Sainz was relieved to finish behind his replacement at McLaren, Daniel Ricciardo. He considered it to be good omen considering McLaren’s position last season.
“It is encouraging because last year I remember I passed Charles pretty easy, so I remember how big was the difference between the McLaren and the Ferrari,” he said.
“I was close to overtaking the McLaren at the end, and I had much better pace than Daniel towards the end of the race. We were catching by half a second per lap.
“So there’s positive signs, there’s encouragement, and there’s a big step compared to last year. Now it is a matter of fine tuning the details, keep working hard back in Maranello and keep improving.”
