Carlos Sainz Jr. has downplayed the closely-matched nature of the timesheets on Tuesday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, believing the “big three” teams are still far in front.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel led the way as testing resumed in Spain, with Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton second and fourth for Mercedes, sandwiching Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, as the remainder of the pack followed.
However, all bar Williams’ Lance Stroll finished within 1.6s of Vettel’s pace-setting time, with Sainz Jr. eighth, just over a second down on the Ferrari driver.
Nonetheless, Sainz Jr. suggested the competitive timesheets was merely a “coincidence” and doubts that the leading trio of teams have been reeled in by their rivals.
“The performance of a car nowadays can vary five to six seconds so it doesn’t mean anything that we are all in a couple of seconds,” he said.
“Each car can go up to three seconds faster or three second slower, so it’s not realistic, also the track varies a lot within the day.
“I found the track very difficult to drive this afternoon, and then it was getting a bit better in some stages when the wind was coming down, then being very bad again, also when you do your fastest lap time does count a lot.
“I think the main teams are still looking good out there the big three teams as they are last year, I don’t think that picture is going to change too much.
“The rest we will see, the midfield was incredibly tight so will be interesting to see who has done a better job over the winter.”
On Renault’s progress, Sainz Jr commented: “There’s room to improve on everything, obviously like everyone, everyone has performance level in the car, also from our side, balance-wise, set-up wise.
“I said it last week and I say it again, we have big margins of improvements for finding better set-up; I’m not worried.
“Again today was more about recovering mileage not so much about testing, and hopefully the next few days I start investigating a bit where to go.”
