Ferrari's Sainz 'not satisfied with where we are' in Vegas

It was a solid start to the Las Vegas weekend for Ferrari with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc ending the evening in fourth and fifth place respectively.

While expressing optimism about their race pace, Sainz admitted that it had been a "complicated" day for the team because of the conditions, while Leclerc felt that it had "not been a great day for us."

Leclerc claimed the inaugural pole position around the streets of Las Vegas for Ferrari in 2023, but this time it seemed that Mercedes had the upper hand with only McLaren's Lando Norris able to match Lewis Hamilton's pace.

"Mercedes has been very strong all day, Lando and McLaren too," Sainz acknowledged. “But I think we're in the mix.

“The race [pace] we seemed to be okay once everything gets up to temperature, but over one lap we still have some work to do.

“Maybe we are not performing as strong as everyone was thinking we were going to perform," he admitted. "So we have some homework tonight to maybe try and find some lap time, especially coming from qualifying.

• Read also: Hamilton continues on top in second practice in Vegas

"[It was] a complicated Thursday here in Vegas due to a challenging track with very low grip which gave us a strange feeling inside the car," he explained.

"For FP2 we tried something different but we are still not satisfied with where we are and we need to keep working on it," I suggested. "Hopefully the analysis tonight will help in finding our biggest areas of improvement."

Leclerc agreed that Ferrari have work to do if they're to match what looks to be a strong performance from Mercedes this weekend.

"It was not a great day for us and it seems to have been complicated for everyone else as well," he said. "We are not as strong as we expected to be coming into the weekend.

"With the cold weather conditions, it was difficult to bring the tires up to temperature, which we knew would be a challenge.

“We've got to try and find something to try and turn the situation around, but we're not so far [away],” the Monegasque argued. “All in all I think we are very strong in race pace, a bit less in quali.

“I think we have some ideas of what to do to try and improve that," he added. "But then it's a compromise of how good you want to be in the race compared to qualifying, and we need to find the right compromise.

"We will work on that. Let's see what we can do tomorrow."

Leclerc is currently in P3 in the drivers championship, 24 points behind Norris after finishing in fifth place in Brazil, while Sainz is fifth in the standings as he heads into his final three races with Ferrari.

Ferrari itself is vying with McLaren over second place in the constructors championship. Ferrari is currently 36 points behind and has Red Bull just 13 points behind them in turn with just Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to go.

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