The gearbox failure suffered in the second free practice session of the Dutch Grand Prix presented the bill to Carlos Sainz in qualifying. In fact, the Ferrari driver missed the only free practice session held in the dry over the weekend in Zandvoort, thus preventing him from working on the set-up of his SF-24, but also from simulating a time attack.
The Spaniard was hoping to make the most of this morning’s session, which however was marred by rain and the accident of Logan Sargeant’s Williams, which caused a red flag for about 45 minutes. In the end, the son of art found himself in qualifying almost blind and in the end had to settle for 11th place on the grid, missing out on Q3 by just a handful of thousandths.
A big disappointment for the Ferrari driver, who however gave the impression of not having much higher expectations for today’s qualifying, given that the Reds historically do not go well with the Dutch track. And confirmation also came from his teammate Charles Leclerc, who despite having regularly competed in all the sessions, was unable to do better than the sixth time, a gap of nine tenths from the pole position of Lando Norris’ McLaren.
Carlos Sainz, Scuderia Ferrari
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
“You can’t do miracles in this sport with the level on the grid: if you miss the only free practice session on dry ground, you get to qualifying and it’s tough,” Sainz said very pragmatically to Sky Sport F1. “Obviously I gave it my all to get into Q3, but something was missing. If we add to that the fact that we’re not very fast this weekend and that on the last lap I had traffic from Hulkenberg in T2, it was really very difficult to get into Q3.”
When asked what his expectations are for tomorrow, he continued: “It will be an attacking race, trying to make a comeback, because we will certainly be faster than the cars around me. But it is not easy to overtake on this track, so it will be a matter of trying to minimize the damage compared to today. Unfortunately we are not very strong here and I paid for it too”.
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