F1 | Sainz: “Complex qualifying, but I start third on the clean side”

Fifth yesterday with many regrets, third today with a few more smiles. Carlos Sainz’s Saturday ended with a second row which leaves some positive and encouraging signals ahead of tomorrow’s race, especially keeping in mind the progress of the sprint race in the morning, which passed entirely behind Daniel Ricciardo.

Precisely for this reason, managing to reach the second row, moreover also ahead of Sergio Perez with the Red Bull, represents an excellent starting point on which to build Sunday’s race, with the idea of ​​trying to achieve important points for the classification . At the start of the weekend McLaren looked like they could be a threat, but on the flying lap the team seems not to have fully understood how to extract the potential of the MCL38, which is why both Woking drivers will start behind the Ferraris.

On a track as complex in terms of temperatures and tire management as Miami, the important thing was to put together a lap without major flaws. As we also saw today in qualifying, in the end in the second attempt almost no driver was able to improve the time of the first attempt, demonstrating how complicated it was to put all the various pieces of the puzzle together.

Just thinking about the progress of the sprint, Sainz is satisfied with the third place finish, because it will put him in the position to be able to fight directly with the leaders instead of being forced to chase behind a slower car.

“Honestly it’s a bit of a shame about this morning. I wasn’t able to overtake Ricciardo, but I know that the pace was there and that with a better qualifying I could have been in the top three. We managed to do some clean laps. It’s really difficult here with the new soft tires, every lap is an adventure with the wind and you don’t know what will happen. Taking all this into account, the laps weren’t bad,” the Spaniard explained in interviews, underlining the importance of having hit the second row.

If in other events the important thing was to get the tire into the right window, here the risk was to overheat it even before starting the lap, as seen for some drivers in yesterday’s qualifying. A theme that will also have great importance in tomorrow’s race, where very high temperatures are expected. Undoubtedly the fact that the race will be concentrated on the harder compounds will help to contain overheating, but it is clear that, having to go round after round, it will be difficult to get the tires to catch their breath, having to contain thermal degradation.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“Here, when you finish the lap you often have the feeling that you could have gone much faster by doing a cleaner lap, but it’s almost impossible to do a perfect lap here. There is always a point where the rear slips, a point where the tires overheat, a point where the wind blows differently and you start to struggle in managing the car, so it is very difficult to find a balance between all these elements”, added the Ferrarista, who then underlined why third place, among other things on the clean side of the grid, can represent an excellent starting point on a track where it is difficult to follow.

“Miami is a very difficult track to drive on. That’s why third position, on the clean side of the grid for tomorrow, could be a good starting point.”