Carlos Sainz says Ferrari has yet to show max performance despite impressive winter testing

Carlos Sainz has said that the Ferrari is nowhere near the limit of its performance at Barcelona testing in a potential warning to the rest of the field over the Scuderia’s levels for the coming Formula 1 campaign.

Ferrari and McLaren have perhaps impressed most of all in winter testing so far at the Catalunya circuit and that is making for some intriguing thoughts about the potential pecking order come the Bahrain Grand Prix next month.

Of course, it is early days and every team will be holding a bit back before race weekend in Sakhir in a bid to dupe their rivals but, as things stand, it is the Scuderia and McLaren that have done some of the best work.

That all said, Spanish driver Carlos Sainz has revealed that they probably have three or four more seconds to find in terms of performance when they are at the limit – which they have not been at so far – and the rest of the field will obviously need to try and match that when they too are flat out.

“It was a good start in terms of reliability,” said Sainz.

“We managed to complete testing so far without a single issue which is an encouraging start for us. This is what we are here for in Barcelona.

“For you guys [the media,] unfortunately, it is not very exciting because we are nowhere near to the limit of the car or finding where the performance is but we are doing laps and we are completing them nicely.

[It’s been] normal because we didn’t have any single problem so far and I managed to do a whole run plan.

“As I said, if it is good or bad I don’t know because these Formula 1 cars you can go three or four seconds quicker if you want to or slower.

“We don’t know where everyone stands in this situation.”