Carlos Sainz fears Red Bull might become ‘difficult’ to beat again this season: "No secret that Red Bull looks very good”

Carlos Sainz is concerned about Red Bull in the 2023 F1 season as the team is looking extremely strong in pre-season testing in Bahrain. While the teams are testing their 2023 challengers, they are also keeping a close eye on their rivals and how they are performing.

Since there haven't been any drastic changes since last season, we are seeing some familiar patterns where Red Bull and especially Max Verstappen, are topping the table.

Speaking to SoyMotor.com, Carlos Sainz admitted that the Austrian-British team is looking the strongest on the track. He explained how they were already faster than Ferrari last season and how the scarlet team needs to take a bigger step forward than them in order to succeed in the 2023 F1 season.

Sainz said:

“It's no secret that Red Bull looks very good, it seems to be going very fast. They were already faster than us last year, so if they have taken a step forward it will be difficult to debate them. But that is our goal, to take a bigger step than them and be at their level.”

However, the Spaniard attached little importance to the timing sheets during pre-season testing since teams and drivers could deliberately manipulate lap times to trick other teams. This phenomenon is called 'sandbagging' and is quite common during pre-season testing.

Sainz concluded:

"I always say that I can manipulate time, that I do six seconds up or down. If last year in qualifying, we stayed within a tenth of each other, imagine if it is difficult to know what engine map and what gasoline we have."

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Red Bull head of race engineering happy with a successful first day of pre-season testing

Head of Race Engineering at Red Bull Gianpiero Lambiase was quite pleased with the team's first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain. They collected loads of data as Max Verstappen did a whopping 157 laps and finished at the top of the timing sheets.

Lambiase praised the engineers and people at the factory who worked extremely hard over the winter break to build such a strong car. He said:

"Today was a promising start to the 2023 season as we were able to complete the planned program without major reliability concerns."

"Everyone's hard work over the winter has really paid off as the car hit the ground running in terms of balance, and we were able to concentrate on testing various broader aerodynamic and mechanical configurations to better understand the new platform as well as the subtlety modified tire construction."

After the first day of testing, Sergio Perez also drove the new RB19 on the second day and collected more data for the Red Bull team to work on.