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Williams
SAINZ ADAPTING TO THE FW47, BUT CONFIDENT IN BAHRAIN
When it was put to him that fans have not yet seen the best of Sainz in a Williams ahead of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, the 30-year-old admitted that getting comfortable with the FW47 will still take some time. The Spaniard stated: “If you expect to see the best of Carlos Sainz at Williams in the third race in a new car, then you don’t understand the sport very well.
“I just need to make sure now we start doing less mistakes when it comes to executing the weekend and keep improving my speed, because obviously the speed we can still improve a little bit. We are not as far as it seems – we just need to put a full weekend together and it will come.”
Pushed on how useful it is to now return to the Bahrain International Circuit - where he gained his initial experience with the car in pre-season testing - Sainz answered: “Very useful, because especially here in testing I felt very comfortable with the car."
MCLAREN
PAST WEAKNESS IN BAHRAIN NOT AN ISSUE THIS SEASON
Piastri says Bahrain has not been a "great" track for the team the last few years - but there were stronger points from the test that might mean that could change.
"On paper the layout is still... if you drew a perfect layout for this car, it wouldn't look like this," says Piastri. "But we have some evidence from testing that we are in a good place. But it is about 20 degrees hotter, which will change things as well."
"The laws of physics say you'll never have the perfect car, so you are always working on something. [The car] has its moments, there are a lot of ideas and philosophies that are the same [as 2024] but it is tricky to get a lap time out of it. But if I had to pick out of all 10 cars in the grid, I'd still choose ours."
RED BULL
TEAM 'DEFINITELY NEED TO IMPROVE' IF THEY ARE TO FIGHT FOR 2025 TITLES
Reflecting on his and Red Bull’s first triumph of the year in Japan, Verstappen said: “It’s a good motivation for the team, but we are still looking into how we can improve our car quickly.
“It’s nice to have that little motivation boost, but we are very aware of what our limitations are, and we know we still have to work on that. Hopefully every weekend we can make tiny progressions.”
And, pushed if he can defend his championship crown with the second or third best car in the field, Verstappen stated: “No, we definitely need to improve to be able to fight for a title.
“It’s great that we are one point behind, but I think it’s more that we just maximised our weekends quite well so far. To really fight for a title, we need to find more performance.”
ALPINE
DOOHAN RECOVERED AFTER SHUNT IN JAPAN
Doohan admits he was sore on Saturday following his Friday shunt last weekend, and even worse on Sunday. But he says after a few days off, he's good to go now.
It does go to show what these drivers put their bodies through - especially at a circuit like Suzuka, where they were pushing flat out from start to finish.
When asked about his performance hopes this weekend, the Aussie stated: "I look forward to having a clean weekend and putting it all together. We all know it here from testing, albeit 25 degrees hotter! But I look forward to just cracking on, the back-to-back nature of the triple-header helps to just keep the flow."
FERRARI
LECLERC HOPEFUL FERRARI CAN 'CLOSE THE GAP' WITH NEW PARTS
The Scuderia are currently fourth in the Teams' standings after struggling to match the pace of the frontrunners across the opening three rounds, and further hindered by a double disqualification in China. However, with the SF-25 set to feature new components this weekend at the Bahrain Grand Prix, Leclerc is optimistic that the outfit can start to close the gap, though the 27-year-old acknowledged that this step will not be enough alone.
“We’ve got some new bits on the car coming [this weekend], which I hope will help us to close that gap a little bit,” Leclerc explained. “Whether it will be enough to close the complete gap I don’t think so, I don’t think there’s that in what we’re bringing here.
“I hope it will help us to be closer but it’s still quite a significant step. In Suzuka I think that this was the gap that there is between McLaren and ourselves which is three-tenths, and we need to work very hard in order to catch that."
Asked for his prediction of where Ferrari will be with the new parts onboard, Leclerc played down the possibility of any great leaps as he responded: “Hopefully the gap will be a bit smaller, but I don’t think it’s enough to be able to be at the level of McLaren and Max [Verstappen] this weekend, but little by little hopefully we can close that gap a bit more."
