Sainz pessmistic about Ferrari's chances in title fight and expects horrendous showing in Qatar
With only two races left to complete in 2024, Ferrari stoll has an outside chance of clinching its first Constructors' title since 2008. However, Carlos Sainz is pessimistic about the Scuderia's chances.
Ferrari were favourites heading into the Las Vegas weekend, but they were caught by surprise on Thursday when Mercedes started to display a shocking performance.
The Scuderia managed to secure encouraging starting positions for the race, with Carlos Sainz taking second and Charles Leclerc fourth for the 50-lap Nevadan round. The Monégasque then had a brilliant start, jumping to second at the first corner while the Spaniard dropped to third.
Although the two Ferrari drivers appeared to be the quickest in the opening stages of the race, their tyre completely fell off the cliff on Lap 8 which forced them to pit for a new set of hards. However, their pace on the hards was impressive again and managed to salvage their day by climbing through the field to secure a third and fourth place for the Scuderia.
Ferrari headed 36 points adrift of McLaren in the teams' standings into Las Vegas. Despite being unable to challenge for the victory, the Scudeia outscored the papaya outfit by 12 points, and is now heading to Qatar with the aim to reduce the 24-point gap even further.
However, Carlos Sainz expects the Lusail track to expose his SF-24's weaknesses, and thus he looks pessimistic into the title battle between the sport’s two most successful outfits.
"We just need to go into that trying to maximise whatever we have. I think over the last few weekends we've done a good job. I think today the maximum, yesterday the maximum was a P2 in quali, today the maximum was a P3 in the race.
"In Qatar, the maximum might be a P5 or a P6 because in that car, with this car in a track like Qatar, I expect to struggle and I expect McLaren and Mercedes to be very strong. probably also even Red Bull, given that they were strong also in quali in Austin.
"So yeah, I think it's going to be a very challenging weekend for us. That's why today it was important for us to get maximum number of points available, and we kind of did that for the pace that we had.
