Mattia Binotto has suggested that the mishaps suffered by Carlos Sainz in Melbourne and at Imola were caused by pressure, but the Spaniard disagrees with his Ferrari boss.
Sainz enjoyed a productive start to his second campaign with the Scuderia, scoring consecutive podium finishes in Bahrain and in Saudia Arabia.
But the Spaniard blotted his copy book in Australia where he spun on the opening lap of the race at Albert Park after a poor start and retired on the spot.
Sainz then crashed in the second segment of qualifying at Imola but recovered from the mishap to finish fourth in Saturday's sprint event.
Unfortunately, the Scuderia charger was on the receiving end of a mistake by McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo at the start of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, a blunder that left him stranded in the gravel trap.
Although Sainz's second DNF had come about through no fault of his own, Binotto suggested that his driver was still learning how to manage the pressure associated with driving a front-running car.
"I think that's a matter of managing the pressure," Binotto said, quoted by RacingNews365. "Maybe the first time in his career, he's got a car which is fast enough to compete for the best positions.
"He simply needs to get used to that, but he will do it very quickly, because I know how smart and how capable he is to manage the pressure."
Read also:
But Sainz denied his successive mishaps were pressure-induced, suggesting that they were rather the result of his efforts to come to grips with Ferrari's F1-75.
"I don't think [the] mistake was pressure," he said, alluding to his off in qualifying at Imola.
"I knew I had already done a very good banker lap to go to Q3. I was just trying out there, to try different lines, different balance.
"I'm still out there trying and hustling with the car to try and find my groove.I wasn't actually pushing that much, and I made a mistake that in these [wet] conditions can happen.
"But you asked me, did I feel pressure? No, it was Q2. I was playing around with the car and made a mistake."
Although he believes that he is keeping the pressure at bay, Sainz conceded at Imola that his second consecutive DNF on the opening lap of a race was a hard pill to swallow.
"Very painful," was how he described his misfortune. "I'm not going to hide it, it was a very negative day for me.
"It's how it goes sometimes in sport, you have bad moments and [it] was definitely a low for me.
"I keep trying to learn from them, and keep trying to make myself stronger from them. The important thing is that we bounced back solidly."
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
