Carlos Sainz says he's still "experimenting" with Ferrari's new F1-75 in order to gain a better understanding of how the car responds to certain settings.
Sainz enjoyed a strong start to his second campaign with the Scuderia, scoring podium finishes in both Bahrain and Jeddah, two good results that have put the Spaniard second in the Drivers' standings, 12 points behind Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc.
But Sainz has admitted to a lack of feeling for Ferrari's new-generation car, which he says justifies his current deficit to Leclerc.
©Ferrari
"I feel like if I compare myself to the end of last year, last year I knew exactly what I needed to do to the car in order to go faster at each track, and what I needed from the suspension, the aero, and everything," Sainz explained.
"Every time I went to a new track at the end of the year, I knew exactly where to set it up and what would work for each track. With this car, very little."
After his opening race in Sakhir, Sainz vowed to work on his approach to setting up his F1-75. And his weekend in Saudi Arabia confirmed that he is still in learning mode and that he'll need more races to get a firm hold on Ferrari's charger.
"I mean, we’ve had a good winter testing and we’ve been consistent and we’ve been running a very similar car across the test and into the first race," he said.
"We’ve developed it, we found our setup direction that seemed to work well in Bahrain. We need races, we need samples.
"We need time and on the personal side I just need to keep experimenting, keep trying directions and see, what the car likes and what I like as a driver also."
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