Carlos Sainz Jr. does not believe the Racing Point F1 Team has shown its true speed during pre-season testing, with the Spaniard believing there is more to come from the Silverstone-based team heading into the new season.
Racing Point raised eyebrows with the unveiling of their RP20 just prior to the pre-season test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, thanks to its uncanny resemblance to the championship winning W10 of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team from 2019.
The RP20 was quick straight away in Spain but did not dramatically improve their pace across the six days of testing, with McLaren F1 Team’s Sainz believing there is likely to be more to come from them heading into the new campaign, which begins later this month in Australia.
“I think every single team, at some point of the tests, they’ve done a very strong lap time, so it’s very difficult to know who is in front of the midfield or behind,” Sainz is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “I think the Racing Point and even the AlphaTauri, I would put them as probably the most dangerous guys to beat.
“The team [McLaren] doesn’t have a clear picture of how far we are from the top three. But we will see immediately in FP1, FP2 [in Melbourne], when we will run the same fuel loads or more or less.
“On the midfield, the Racing Point – they’ve been very quick the whole of the two weeks. They hit the track on the first day and they did a [1m]17.3. And since then they haven’t improved much because I don’t think they want to – but that 17.3 on the first day, I think it impressed all of us and they’re going to be quick, very quick.”
