Carlos Sainz has admitted that he’s still “not convinced” that Ferrari’s recent Formula 1 updates are an improvement as the team continues to struggle with bouncing.
Sainz, who will depart Ferrari once this season concludes and is still to decide upon his next move, qualified as the lead Ferrari car in a commendable fourth position.
But while Sainz’s best lap in Q3 was good enough to edge Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes to a place on the second row, he was four-tenths behind the leading McLarens.
Ferrari has introduced a revised floor this weekend to cure the high-speed bouncing that’s hindered its competitiveness, but Sainz thinks it’s soon to claim it’s worked.
“I’m not convinced,” Sainz admitted when asked if the new package was a better platform to work from.
“I think we need some time to analyse and we need to go to proper high-speed corners, 250kph, 260kph, that is where the thing starts getting tricky.
“Here, 240kph, 220kph in Turn 11 and Turn 4 and already in Q3 I was struggling a bit with the bouncing.
“So we’re going to need to go back and analyse carefully if it’s done exactly what we want. And yeah, see if it’s performing a bit better.”
Sainz has insisted that bouncing has been the SF-24’s main weakness all season and emphasised that solving the gremlin was pivotal to Ferrari challenging its rivals.
“Q3 my last two laps I started having a bit of the same problems, not as exaggerated as previously, but these are also lower speed corners than Silverstone,” he added.
“So I think we’re going to need to properly test it in Spa Pouhon and proper high speed to see what happens.”
Meantime, Sainz acknowledged Ferrari still boasts a gap of three or four-tenths to the cars ahead and played down the team’s hopes of a podium finish this weekend.
“To be honest, we know we have this weakness,” he conceded. “We have had it since the beginning of the season and we’re doing everything we can to solve it.
“But you need time and now I hope that probably not in the short term, but in the longer term, hopefully before I leave, we can come up with a proper solution because it’s still not ideal to drive in these kind of corners and a bit on the edge, but hopefully we’ve done a step in this weekend and we can move on for Spa.”
