Carlos Sainz says that expectations of Ferrari's Imola upgrade were not realistic.

With local outfit RB the only team that didn't bring any upgrades for the start of the European season - but still appears to be doing quite well - Ferrari brought one of the most radical packages including new front and rear wings, engine cover and rear suspension, raising hopes that the Maranello outfit would be able to challenge Red Bull.

Having dominated the opening practice sessions all was looking good, but when push came to shove in qualifying not only did Max Verstappen raise the benchmark, McLaren also appeared clearly better than the Ferraris.

Ahead of the race weekend, there was widespread speculation that the package could be worth as much as 0.4s, but while Charles Leclerc qualified 0.224s off Verstappen's pole time, Carlos Sainz was 0.487s adrift of the world champion.

"It's worked exactly as we expected," said Sainz after the session. "Unfortunately, I don't know, for some reason everybody expected us to be flying this weekend with the new package.

I've been seeing numbers of our package going around that were completely out of reality nowadays," he added, "already to bring 0.1s is good job by the team.

"I'm not saying we brought 0.1s, 0.2s or 0.05s," he continued, "but it is not the numbers people were mentioning. And with that in mind, it was always going to be difficult to make the jump this weekend because people are also upgrading their cars here."

In terms of single-lap performance, Sainz believes that, other than Red Bull, McLaren also has the jump on the Scuderia.

"McLaren had it in Miami," he said, "it's just on the soft tyre they struggled in Miami. If you saw the lap times they were doing on mediums in sprint qualifying and the race especially, they were 0.2s or 0.3s faster than us and then we come to a McLaren circuit, which is Imola.

"It was always going to be difficult to beat McLaren around here," he admitted, "they were a 0.1s ahead of Charles and 0.3s ahead with me. So I was pretty sure it was always going to be a McLaren track and hopefully there will come Ferrari tracks where we can challenge them."

"We cannot be fully happy of course," said teammate Leclerc, "but one thing that is good is that the upgrade is doing exactly what is expected. So that is always a good sign, but on a track like this maybe we haven't seen yet all the benefits of the upgrade and we came short of our target which was to be on pole position.

"We need to wait and see a few races before judging the upgrades because we might not be running in the optimum window for this new package and all of this. So I'm sure there is more potential to unlock.

"Was today worse than expected? Probably a little bit," he admitted, "we expected to be a bit closer, however a season is still long, we still have plenty of ideas how to extract more this package and I'm sure we will in the next few races and it will be crucial for the rest of the season."

Interestingly, other than unrealistic expectations, both drivers had alternative theories as to why they didn't perform as well as anticipated from the early evidence.

"It's a twisty track, with a lot of kerb riding," said Leclerc, "which, when you are on a kerb, whatever you do in terms of aero, whatever, the small differences are a bit less obvious, so it might not be the best track to look at the upgrades. If a car is really, really good on kerb riding here it might make a bit more of a difference than an upgrade, aero wise.

"That's what I meant when I said that Imola might not see the full potential of the upgrades we brought," he added. "When you put a new package on the car it always requires one or two races in order to find the optimum window of this package to set up the car in a way it performs its best, so there will be this learning we will have in the next few races and this should bring us to be closer to extract the maximum out of it.

"We'll work on this for the next race and hopefully this will make us go back in front of McLaren. Everything we expected from this upgrade we got, so the numbers confirmed what we were expecting."

"When you look at the soft laps and the GPS data, you have always seen the McLarens and Max since FP3 looking very strong," added Sainz. "The only thing that is puzzling me is how we can be 0.4s down in one sector, which is sector one.

"I seem strong on the mediums and the hard," he continued, "but when I put on the new soft tyres I find barely any lap time, which puzzles me a bit and is something I need to work on."

Indeed, recalling the SF-24's notoriously erratic predecessor, Sainz believes the new car shares some of its sensitivities.

"It is a balance shift," he said, "and it's also the way the wind was blowing today, it doesn't really help our car. It's a tailwind into Turn 2 and Turn 7, which is still our main weakness with this car.

"We know we need to improve it and we have been trying for a while, so that didn't help our sector one, but in general we never had enough to challenge Red Bull. McLaren maybe with a huge lap, but when you have the two cars in front you know they are strong.

"The wind was blowing from behind and wind from the front into Turns 2, 5 and 7 is mega for our car, but today with a tailwind we struggled with a particular thing in those conditions. And maybe not switching the tyres perfectly on, plus the wind you lose 0.4s. That's something I need to work on myself and with the engineers."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Imola here.