Carlos Sainz says "I think we still need to improve"

Despite McLaren's relatively positive start to the season Carlos Sainz believes that the team still need to improve if they are to reach their goals. Sainz is 12th in the drivers championship on 6 points and will hope to catch up with his team mate Lando Norris who is in 9th.  

"Pretty much every area I think we still need to improve,” said the Spaniard to Motorsport.com. “Because we look at Mercedes, we see where they are, we look at Ferrari, and then you look at the data and you see that every area of the car needs to be improved."

"If we compare ourselves against the midfield, then we only need to improve in little areas to come on top,” he said. “But we are not comparing ourselves against that. We are comparing ourselves to a car that is a second quicker at the moment than us. And that's the target, to improve in every area."

“On a personal level, this one is a bit of a relief after three races where I just had exactly the [same] pace,” he said. “I had it [the speed] in the first three races but just for a reason that I still don't understand, three consecutive runs of bad luck happened to us.

“We finally didn't have any issues and we just demonstrated what we are capable of doing.”

McLaren have greatly out performed Renault and will be encouraged by this as they are using the same engine. They will hope that they can establish themselves as the 'best of the rest' come the end of the season.