It is why Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc triumphing of the general timing sheets throughout today’s Bahrain test has actually hardly signed up in discussions.
Sainz’s general test-topping time of 1m29.921 s, set on the 2nd day, was around 7 tenths quicker than the Red Bull standard of 1m30.679 s set by Sergio Perez on the exact same afternoon.
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No one is recommending that it has any similarity to the real image of efficiency (even taking into account a 0.6 s time distinction in the tire substances they utilized).
The agreement amongst the paddock is that Red Bull is plainly going into next weekend’s F1 season-opener as the group to beat.
What is not so sure, however, is precisely how huge its benefit is, since there is another Sainz aspect to the Bahrain test that has actually used F1 a lot of food for considered where the competitive image lies in between his Ferrari group and Red Bull.
As groups crunched through the information, it was a race-sim run from Sainz on the 2nd night, running in comparable however not similar conditions to Perez on the exact same program, that used some intrigue about simply how great the brand-new SF-24 might be.
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24
Image by: Andy Hone/ Motorsport Images
In pure lap time, the timing sheets recommended it was benefit Ferrari. Over the 3 race stints, Sainz showed to be quicker than the Red Bull.
The Spaniard’s benefit on the C3 balanced simply more than 0.4 seconds– and extended to more than one second on their last stints, which were both on the C1 difficult substance.
The scale of that benefit was so severe that it likely indicates Perez having actually run much heavier on fuel. With it extensively accepted that 10kg of weight corresponds to around 0.3 seconds of lap time around Bahrain, there is rather a high degree of irregularity to be precisely sure of just how much of a reasonable photo their 2 runs provided.
One thing is not in doubt from the Sainz race sim– that the high tire destruction which hindered much of Ferrari’s 2023 project appears to have actually been treated.
Sainz’s type was extremely constant. Taking a look at his last stint on the C1 in specific, it was a world far from how things played out in 2015’s Bahrain Grand Prix, when both he and Leclerc had a hard time enormously with tire destruction.
His operated on the C1 played out like this: 35.5, 35.7, 35.5, 35.6, 35.3, 35.4, 35.5, 35.2, 35.3, 35.1, 35.2, 35.2, 35.1, 35.1, 34.9, 35.3, 35.8, 35.5, 35.6.
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24
Picture by: Steven Tee/ Motorsport Images
For group manager Fred Vasseur,
