Mercedes "hype up" then "blow the competition away"

Carlos Sainz has dismissed "hype" from Mercedes over the Ferrari F1-75 as "typical" of the last six years.

Ferrari has gained a number of admirers throughout the paddock as the team has shown consistently strong pace so far in pre-season testing.

On Friday, Mercedes driver George Russell talked up Ferrari's pace, while Lewis Hamilton suggested the Scuderia would finish one-two if next weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix was today.

But Sainz was quick to halt the rising expectation levels. He said: “It’s typical Mercedes, typical George just to hype up the other and then come to the first race and blow the competition away.

“If it would be the first year that they had done it then I would maybe believe them but they have done it for four, five, six years now and they keep surprising us in the first race.

“So as you can imagine, I don’t believe much and already on GPS we can see what they are doing [but] I’m not going to say much.”

Sainz concedes "not much" confidence from testing times

Sainz ended Friday second fastest behind surprise package Kevin Magnussen in the Haas after taking over driving duties from team-mate Charles Leclerc for the more representative sunset session.

Asked how much confidence he could take from the testing timesheets so far, he said: “Still obviously not much.

"We are still going through our run plan, going through things that we want to test before coming here for the race weekend. And still, it’s very difficult to know where everyone is, particularly here in Bahrain. “One hour changes everything. A wind direction change here can mean one corner becomes super tricky to super easy and some track temperature up and down just means you are two-three tenths quicker straightaway.

“It’s very difficult to make conclusions in Bahrain, even when you are testing stuff that you are interested in making conclusions.

"It is particularly challenging because the track keeps changing and evolving every half an hour basically.”

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