Ferrari progress through 2023 gives Sainz hope

Ferrari deserved to finish behind Mercedes in this year’s constructors’ championship, believes Carlos Sainz, but the progress the team made through the season gives him hope for 2024.Charles Leclerc’s second place in the final race in Abu Dhabi was not enough to overhaul Mercedes, with George Russell finishing third to ensure the two teams were separated by just three points at the end of the year. Having come so close to repeating the result of 2022, Sainz says Mercedes’ consistency was the key, but points to Ferrari’s improvement as the year went on as a reason for optimism.“I think it’s fair,” Sainz said. “I think we’ve had our moments where we’ve been quicker, I think Mercedes had their moments when they’ve been quicker. Overall, maybe a bit of reliability here and there and probably overall I think we’ve been a quicker car but they’ve been a little bit more consistent than us.“Anyway, I think it’s a season where the team has made a lot of progress. I think we’ve learned a lot from this car, from these tires. We finished the season a lot stronger than what we started. And it’s something we can bank on for next year, expecting hopefully a more competitive package.”With Ferrari having one of its cars fail to start a race on two occasions from the final six rounds — through Sainz in Qatar and Leclerc in Brazil — the Spaniard says that is another area that needs addressing, as the pair of DNS results ultimately proved costly.“Yes, 100%,” he said. “At the same time, I prefer a team that shows progress in terms of progress, pace, tire learning with a car that is anyway not fighting for the championship, than one or two races of reliability. But for sure we want to be the whole package — we need to improve how tight we arrive to the end of the season also.“For sure the issue in Qatar, the issue in Vegas with the problem we had with the chassis change and again on the Friday, it’s not going to help our reliability and our scoring points. It’s something to learn from but at the same time, I’m proud with how the team has progressed through the season.”