Ferrari drivers Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc both agree they would not accept P2 at the Bahrain Grand Prix right now.
The Scuderia maintained their strong performance from pre-season in practice at Sakhir on Friday, finishing second and third behind world champion Max Verstappen.
But asked if that was a result Ferrari would “sign for” come Sunday evening, Sainz made it clear that wouldn’t be the Ferrari way.
“Ferrari must never sign to finish P2,” the Spaniard told Sky Italia on Friday. “Ferrari must always aim at achieving victories. That’s why we are here.
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“We don’t know where we are yet [in the pecking order], we can’t confirm we would be happy with P2. We have to aim for the top, and that’s what we aim for.”
That being said, it was a tricky evening for Sainz under the lights in Practice 2, who finished half a second behind Leclerc and Verstappen.
“FP1 went well, the feeling with the car was good and an improvement from testing,” he said. “Unfortunately in FP2, this good feeling went away a bit.
“We didn’t nail the set-up and I struggled to put a clean lap together. We definitely need to have a close look at that tonight.
“I’m confident we can get back to the feeling from this morning and that we’ll be ready for qualifying.”
As for Leclerc, he backed up his teammate’s answer on the question of accepting second.
“For sure I want to win, everyone inside the team wants to win, so I wouldn’t sign for P2 either,” he said. “It would be a great step compared to last year.
“It’s a completely new project, we said that often, and there is optimism because we know how much we worked to arrive at this point.
“So as Mattia [Binotto, team boss] said, we will try to be up front, fighting for victories every race. Then we will see if we managed to do that or not.”
The Monegasque, who claimed his first F1 pole in Bahrain in 2019, was also satisfied with his work on Friday, as he finished just 0.09s slower than Max in the Red Bull.
“Our first two sessions have gone rather well, without any issues,” he stated. “We seem to be quite competitive, but we have to keep in mind that it is still early to draw any conclusions.
“I am quite confident in the car and it felt good overall. We tested many things and worked on the car a lot since the first session. We made good progress and have to keep pushing to find small details ahead of qualifying tomorrow.”
