Sainz: We just used the tyres too much

As a result Carlos Sainz could not fend off the charging Fernando Alonso for third and was helpless against his compatriot's attack, while he could barely keep Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton at bay.

Ferrari's form was somehow a mystery during pre-season testing, some thinking they might be sandbagging, but if the results of Bahrain are anything to go by, the Scuderia have work to do to sort out their SF-23's pace and tyre degradation, not to mention their reliability woes, that hit the #16 car of Charles Leclerc ending his race on lap 41.

Sainz reflected on his race, admitting he was surprised to have kept third place for so long before Alonso took it away from him.

The Spaniard said; quoted by Formula 1's official website: "I was actually surprised how long we were lasting in that position.

"From the test we knew that the Red Bulls and the Aston Martins just have a lot better [tyre] deg, a lot better race pace than us, and in the end we had to settle for P4, which to be honest is not a lot better than we could have done today," Sainz explained.

"It’s a bit of a reality check, it’s where we are. We just used the tyres too much," he added. "As soon as I pushed to defend from Fernando, I cooked the tyres and then you need to start looking also to Lewis.

"We managed to hold Lewis off, but it gives us very little margin to play with in the race," the Ferrari driver maintained.

Asked about the reliability issue that hit Leclerc; Sainz said: "[It’s] not ideal the reliability, but more than that it worries me the gap to Red Bull and the race pace of Aston, which at the moment is faster.

"I don’t believe it will be like that at every race," he insisted. "But it shows that in these sorts of tracks where you need the rear it costs us a lot of race time.

"A lot of work to do. We need to put our heads down, get the homework done and it’s only race one, so we still have margin of improvement," the winner of one grand prix concluded.