This is why Sainz is worried about his chances in Monaco

In their first home race of the 2024 season, Ferrari would have been hoping for a better result. The Prancing Horse came with brand-new upgrades for the SF-24 at Imola, hoping to take themselves to the front of the grid. In practice, it looked promising, but only Charles Leclerc could find his way to the podium, finishing in P3. Carlos Sainz could only manage P5 in his newly-updated car, finishing 22 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen, quite a way off where he would have hoped to have been.

Sainz says Ferrari 'need to improve one-lap pace' coming into Monaco

With these upgrades not bringing Ferrari to where they hoped they would have been, the team from Maranello will look toward the iconic Monaco Grand Prix to see if their fortunes change. However, Sainz, speaking in the paddock to the media in Imola, including GPblog, is not too optimistic about his chances with these new updates. "This package is not optimised for Monaco," the Spaniard said. "The package is more for medium, high-speed tracks, so I don't expect anything huge. It is all about qualifying, so we'll have a look at what we can do."

Of course, overtaking around the Circuit de Monaco is almost impossible, meaning that Saturday is the most important day of the weekend, as Sainz alluded to. But again, the 29-year-old believes the Ferrari won't be challenging for pole position come qualifying. "It's encouraging to see that our race pace is strong, but we need to improve the one-lap pace.

"I think some good pace [at Imola], and it meant that we were in the race. We seem like we can fight with these guys. It just seems like in quality they have a bit more than us, which is something that we need to look into and something that we need to keep improving, because there are going to be circuits where you cannot do anything with strategy or with overtaking."