After qualifying second and third at the Austrian Grand Prix, Ferrari drivers said, “here’s everything to play for.”
After qualifying second and third at the Austrian Grand Prix, Ferrari drivers said, “here’s everything to play for.” Last week, Sainz got his first pole position at Silverstone. At the British GP in Austria, he was only 0.082 seconds behind pole-sitter Max Verstappen’s time, so he almost did it again. But Sainz didn’t think too much about how he did in qualifying. Instead, he was optimistic about where he would start in tomorrow’s Sprint.
What Sainz Expressed
“I think starting P3 on the clean side, there’s everything to play for,” said Sainz. “I think it’s going to be fun racing here with the amount of slipstream there is, and tows, and DRS. I think it’s going to be good fun and we’re going to have a good weekend. For sure when you look back and you see how close it is, you look back to the lap and find places where you’ve left that tenth of a second that could have given us pole,” he added. “But I’m sure these two guys also know where they lost it, or where they gained it.
“The good thing is, we put a good lap there at the end of Q3. It wasn’t easy because the tyres were very cold after the red flag [caused by George Russell’s crash], and trust in the car into Turn 1 and Turn 3 wasn’t the easiest. But I know where the lap time is, I just wish I could have done it a little bit better. But I’m going to take P3 and being close to these two guys [Verstappen and Leclerc].”
How Sainz Did During the Season
Even before he won his first race at the British GP, Sainz’s performance was getting better after a slow start to the season. He had been seconds away from winning in Monaco and Montreal, and in four of the five races before Silverstone, he had qualified in the top three. But even though he has made “progress” in the last few weeks, the Spanish driver still thinks he needs to do more work before Sunday’s race.
Sainz said, “I’m getting there. This quali was strong, especially Q3, peaking at the right time, not taking too many risks in Q1 and Q2 and going for it in Q3. I think there’s progress being done, and I’m definitely a lot more confident and comfortable after the last three races. There’s still some work to do. The good thing is that we have FP2 tomorrow. We will long-run the car, try the tyres and try to get a bit more comfortable in order to go for it in [the Sprint] and the race.”
In Spielberg, Sainz’s teammate Charles Leclerc beat him in qualifying for the ninth time this season. Leclerc, who qualified second for tomorrow’s Sprint, complained about how hard it was to get the tires warm, and he aimed for a “clean” weekend in Spielberg.
“I think we are all three very, very close so it was an exciting qualifying. In the last lap, I struggled a little bit bringing the tyres back after such a long time in the pits, but Max was just a little bit quicker, so congrats to him and hopefully we’ll have an exciting race tomorrow. I just want to have a clean race. Obviously, it’s been five races that it’s a bit of a disaster on my side, so I just hope that everything will go clean, and we will finally score the points we deserve. “
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