Carlos Sainz is not looking forward to trying to overtake birthday boy Lando Norris after the Brit was "particularly aggressive" towards the Ferrari driver during Saturday's Sprint.
The Spaniard finished second in the Sprint, after managing to move past Norris early in the short-form race. But he wasn't impressed by the way the McLaren racer tried to defend against the overtake.
Regardless, Sainz will have to do it again in the main race. A five-place grid penalty for taking a new engine for this weekend means he drops to seventh on the starting grid, just one place behind his former McLaren team-mate once again.
"The challenge of passing Lando, who was particularly aggressive with me – I don’t know why he defended for his life and I had to make it stick," said the Ferrari driver. "But hopefully I can pass him quickly over the line and then join the battle at the front."
Several drivers were out of position at the start of the Sprint after a rain-affected qualifying session. But more of the big-hitters are closer to the front on the race grid – and Ferrari's task is made extra difficult by the fact their main rivals for second place in the standings, Mercedes, have both their drivers on the front row.
To be successful, Sainz knows his team are going to have to get their strategy spot on. "It’s going to be, I think, exciting like it was today," he added. "Probably, the order of the cars tomorrow is already more set than the order that we had today. So, it will be more of a strategic race.
"We will have the two Mercs, the two Red Bulls and the two Ferraris – unless something crazy happens in lap one. And I think it looks like that's the race pace of the cars. Maybe Max can go back to having a good pace, after struggling with a medium [in the Sprint].
"Then we need to see, as a team, together with Charles, how we can at least get closer to the Mercs, to lose as many less points as possible, which is the target.
"Unfortunately, I have to take a penalty, which is a bit the story of my season. Whenever I'm strong and whenever I'm on the pace, I have a setback that weekend, which is a bit the story of the whole season, as I said, but yeah, at least I feel confident. I feel comfortable. I feel like I did a perfect race today. So I'm up for the fight."
