Carlos Sainz says that Ferrari needs to accept the reality of its position this year, and take heart from their performances when they've done their best even if it means they're not in the top three.
While his team mate Charles Leclerc has been on the podium three times this season in Azerbaijan, Austria and Belgium, Sainz' best result so far in 2023 was fourth in Bahrain, together with four fifth place finishes.
That's not the sort of level of competitiveness that Ferrari came into the season hoping for, but right now it's the reality of the situation and Sainz says they shouldn't be too dispirited by this.
The dominance of Red Bull together with an early surge in performance from Aston Martin and recent improvements from Mercedes and McLaren mean that there is little space to be found in the top three.
Ferrari went into the summer break in fourth place in the constructor standings, with Leclerc and Sainz fifth and seventh in the drivers championship respectively.
"It's been obviously relatively a frustrating start," Sainz admitted. "I think we all expected the car to be more competitive, ourselves to be more competitive and the field has got really, really tight.
"Then we kind of realised that Red Bull was such a big step ahead of us and it was going to be difficult to challenge them.
"Now you're going through these massive up and downs where some weekends you might be fighting for P3 and others you're just finishing P8," he continued.
"In performance swing means you might just be 0.1s in front missing or 0.1s behind that tight field, which is not a lot," he said. "But the end result looks very different in Ferrari when you come back with a P3 or P8.
"Now we just need to kind of accept that's the fight that we are in," he insisted. "If one weekend we need to go and fight for P5 and that's the maximum we can do, we need to celebrate the fact that we've done the maximum with what we have."
Sainz believes it is more important to the team's long-term progression that they not get distracted by external pressures such as criticism in the media.
He said that Ferrari should "focus more on maximising the car's potential, and the team's performance in this second half of the season.
"We want to make sure we maximise our constructor points, stop kind of expecting a win or a podium, and just focus on nailing the principles and be consistent," he urged ahead of the resumption of the season next weekend in Zandvoort.
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