They say “never meet your heroes” because it never ends well. To this, Carlos Sainz would disagree, as he is ready to meet his hero Fernando Alonso on the grid. But this time at the front of it and not in the middle of the pack, thanks to the spectacular display of power by Aston Martin on Saturday, as the speculations have proven just about right.

In the Bahrain GP, Fernando Alonso will start P5, just behind Carlos Sainz, who placed his SF-23 in P4, following powerful drives by both of them as they clocked in within 0.65 seconds of the top. Now, during the race, Sainz hopes to take on the challenges and wants to take on the much more experienced Alonso, thus continuing their battles from previous years.

Sainz, after the race, talked about the battle between him and his fellow Spaniard. As quoted by user FanaticsFerrari, the younger Spaniard said, “I’ve been fighting Fernando for 8 years in the midfield. Now it looks like we will fight a bit further upfront.”

Praising Aston Martin’s progress and acknowledging them as a challenge, he was quoted as saying, “I think we all said it yesterday that we expect them to be in the fight. I’m not sure if they have enough to be the Red Bull, who knows, but they definitely seem in the fight. I hope that still focusing in ourselves we can do a step tomorrow and get ourselves back up there.”

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The two were also spotted later having a debrief, which melted the hearts of the Spanish fans, as they continue to root for the junior Sainz.

Carlos Sainz is optimistic about the race performance

Ferrari decided to keep its drivers in the garage to save themselves a set of tires. Whether it’s a smart move or a blunder, we’ll find that out today. But Sainz, despite all of it, appeared content with the performance.

After the session, he said, “Today we made a step forward as a team. It’s been a difficult build-up to qualifying for me, not having had a clean day yesterday, but we reacted well today.”

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Bahrain GP will be crucial for Sainz for many reasons, but the most important one of the lot is to emerge as the team’s favorite for the title after the Tifosi has largely focused only on Leclerc.