Carlos Sainz is happy to dream of what would be a shock pole position for the Italian Grand Prix but has warned that Red Bull’s race pace is a concern ahead of Sunday’s showdown at Monza.

On his 29th birthday on Friday, Sainz offered up hope to the Ferrari F1 fans by setting the quickest time in practice around the ‘Temple of Speed’ with a lap of one minute 21.355secs, finishing o.019s ahead of Lando Norris in his McLaren.

With Red Bull duo Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen only third and fifth on the timesheet, with the latter just over a quarter of a second behind Sainz, there is a possibility of an upset.

Reflecting on his performance, and on his birthday to boot, Sainz said: “It can’t get much better than that.

“It was a smooth day, to be honest. It’s great to be back at a track like Monza and from the first lap of FP1 to feel the car normal again after such a difficult weekend at Zandvoort.

“As soon as we put the car on track here, for some reason it just adapted a lot better and it was a lot easier to set up and drive it per corner. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to be P1 (in qualifying) and in the race, but at least the feeling is much better.”

Sainz and team-mate Charles Leclerc were left baffled by the performance and feel of the car across the Dutch GP weekend, with the Monégasque, in particular, claiming he had zero understanding of how the SF-23 would perform through each corner.

Whilst Monza is a very different track, requiring specific wings, Sainz added: “It’s the same car basically, but for some reason, it just felt a lot better, which is what puzzles me more.

“But let’s see, I think everyone’s going to lower fuel, higher engine modes and it’s going to be a bit of a different picture, but at least the feeling is decent.”

As to whether the Tifosi could dare to dream of a Ferrari pole and victory, which would end Verstappen’s record-equalling run of nine successive wins at present, Sainz said: “Yeah, dreaming is for free, no? This is one of my favourite sayings.

“Especially at tracks like this, we can all dream and it’s for free, no one can take it away from us.

“But being realistic, also looking at our race pace, that’s when we started seeing the true pace of the Red Bull, they were clearly again three-tenths, half a second ahead in race pace, and over 50-something laps that’s a lot of lap time.”