Sainz: Mercedes hyping up Ferrari just its ‘typical’ F1 game

This week’s final pre-season test has been another good one for Sainz’s Ferrari team, which has maintained the momentum from a strong showing at Barcelona last month.

And with Mercedes appearing to struggle to get fully on top of the handling quirks of the W13, the German car manufacturer has singled out Ferrari as the team to beat heading in to the 2022 season.

Lewis Hamilton suggested after the second day of running in Barcelona that Ferrari could even be on course for a 1-2 in Bahrain based on its current form.

But Sainz is not reading too much in to Mercedes’ comments, and suggests his rival is behaving no different to previous campaigns where it has played down its own form in the build-up to the campaign only to go on and triumph.

“I think it is typical Mercedes,” said Sainz. “Hyping up the others, and then we come to the first race and they blow the competition away, which is typical.

“If it was the first year they did that [tipped others], then maybe I would believe them. But they have done it for five or six years now and they keep crushing us in the first race. So, as you can imagine, I don’t believe much.

“Already we can also see what they are doing...and I am not going to say much.”

George Russell, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Sainz’s final comment is likely to be in reference to the GPS traces that show the comparison in car performance between the Mercedes and Ferrari cars.

Analysis of the best lap times of the two cars shows there is very little to separate them in performance through corners, but the Mercedes loses most of its time on the straights.

The theory is that Mercedes is running with its engine’s performance wound down in a very conservative mode, so it does not show its full