Carlos Sainz says he has "a couple of very interesting things to try" in Jeddah to help him bridge the gap to his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc.
Last weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix winner led the Scuderia's successful charge at Sakhir, extracting the most from the Italian outfit's new F1-75 while Sainz was unable to match Leclerc's pace.
The Spaniard justified his deficit relative to the Monegasque by a lack of feeling for Ferrari's new-generation car. However, he also felt encouraged by his performance despite the shortfall.
"I mean I was right there in the fight for pole in qualifying, and this was good news for me, for the lack of feeling that I have with this car and the lack of understanding that I feel I have," Sainz said.
"It was good news to still be able to put a couple of very strong laps in quali that nearly gave me pole.
"But the fact is that I still need to work on the set-up, I need to work on the car understanding."
©Ferrari
After Bahrain, Sainz took stock of his opening race weekend along with his engineers and says that a few theories emerged on why he was outpaced by Leclerc.
"I’ve done my analysis in these three days with my guys and we had a couple of very interesting theories and a couple of very interesting things to try here," he said.
"I don’t think it’s going to be a matter of one race. A bit like it was last year, no? Little by little chip away at it and get there.
"But we also need more samples. I don’t know if Bahrain was a bit of a one-off and all of a sudden here I am back to where I should be or where I expect myself to be. So let’s see. It’s still early days."
Sainz reckons that Jeddah's high-speed wall-lined track that stretches along the coast of the Red Sea will quickly highlight his level of confidence for this weekend's second round of racing.
"I think the more time I spend in the car, the quicker I will figure it out and the more chances I have to set up the car a bit more to my liking," he said.
"This is going to be an important test because it’s a very high confidence track.
"You need confidence to be fast and close to the walls here and it will show and tell me how confident I am."
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