Red Bull Racing has been the team to beat for a while now.
Even with other race winners this season, Max Verstappen is still on top most of the time. This weekend in Barcelona, Carlos Sainz believes Red Bull remains the biggest threat.
At Thursday’s press conference, Sainz mentioned that Red Bull’s dominant performance in Bahrain might return for the next few races on ‘normal tracks’. He said, “I think we call them normal tracks, but they’re not so normal anymore. We don’t go to them as often as we used to go, so it’s very difficult to understand whether it will be a pattern or not.” He added that Red Bull tends to do well on medium-high-speed tracks and rougher surfaces like Bahrain and Barcelona. So he thinks they are still the team to beat.
Should Ferrari just be worried about Red Bull?
This season is more competitive with only 49 points between Red Bull and Ferrari. McLaren and Mercedes are close behind in third and fourth places. There have been four different race winners: Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, and Charles Leclerc. Mercedes is also looking strong with George Russell matching Verstappen’s qualifying time in Canada and taking pole position.
Sainz doesn’t ignore other teams’ competitiveness: “I think also McLaren is very strong in high-speed corners like here, and now they’re not weak anymore in low-speed corners. So we need to see how that upgrade from Mercedes performs in Barcelona because they were, In fact, the quickest in Canada.”
Fans might find this unpredictability exciting!
“We need to see if Ferrari can find the form of Monaco,” Sainz continued. With some upgrades, maybe they can also perform well on high-speed tracks and manage tires better. He concluded by saying it’s hard to judge who will be fastest until Friday or even FP3.
What do you think? Can Ferrari catch up?
