Sainz joined Ferrari before the 2021 season after he was signed in May as the successor to four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel.
The Spaniard will support Charles Leclerc as a partner of the Italian team and after two impressive years for McLaren will bring the team to third place in the constructors’ championship.
But Sainz will have a narrow window to get the Ferrari SF21 going after pre-season testing has been reduced to just three days before the new season.
This means that most teams can only give each driver a day and a half to run to familiarize themselves with the updated cars.
Although Ferrari plans to privately drive Sainz in one of its older F1 cars in the coming weeks, Sainz admitted that starting the new 2021 season with limited run in the car would be a challenge.
“I know I will arrive at Ferrari and I will need my races and my experience to see how I can get the most out of this car,” Sainz told Motorsport.com.
“If you add that it looks like I’m testing for a day and a half and with just a day and a half of testing in a brand new race, I’m going straight into my first race.” Dare.
“It’s going to be a difficult thing for me. But I like these kinds of challenges. I’ll try to adapt as best I can and as best I can and see what I can make of them.”
Also read:
Sainz previously stressed the importance of signing a multi-year contract with McLaren that will give him long-term stability that will allow him to work at a higher level.
Sainz has signed a first two-year deal with Ferrari and while he felt there would always be pressure, he was confident that the same kind of stability would help bring the best out of him.
“The pressure in Ferrari is always high,” said Sainz. “It doesn’t matter how many years the contract is and I’ll be the first one who wants to be as quick as possible right now.
“But a two-year contract is important for me. It’s one of the things I’ve always said since joining McLaren and of course since joining Ferrari, that it’s always important that a driver has a bit of stability in a team. “
“I feel like I’m at McLaren in my sophomore year, I got a lot more out of the car than I did in my first year. And when you see people like Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault, you can clearly see how important it is to have a little bit of that to take time to know the car.
“You see Charles Leclerc today compared to Charles Leclerc a year and a half ago when he came to Ferrari, he’s a different Charles. When you see Lewis [Hamilton] He is different from today compared to Lewis from 2013 when he joined Mercedes.
“They know a lot better how to extract the car’s performance.”
The post Sainz is happy about the “tough” challenge of the limited Ferrari F1 tests first appeared on monter-une-startup.
