Ferrari need to understand why they were much less competitive when rain fell during qualifying, says Carlos Sainz Jnr.
His team mate Charles Leclerc was second-quickest in SQ2, at which point rain started to fall. SQ3 was wet enough that everyone ran on intermediate tyres and Sainz ended up fifth on the grid, two places ahead of his team mate.
Sainz said he was happy with his car’s performance until that point. “We made it well through SQ1 and SQ2 and then in SQ3 the rain arrived and we didn’t manage to switch on the tyres,” he told the official F1 channel.
“Around here, we were struggling a lot with the rear tyre, we dropped the tyre [temperature] a lot queuing. And then the tyre never came up so I couldn’t really push.”
He qualified 2.2 seconds slower than pole-winner Lando Norris. “It just shows that in these conditions you either switch on the tyre or you don’t,” said Sainz.
“Anyway it seemed that, both cars struggled with tyre temperature and warm-up. So if it’s wet tomorrow, we will need to find something. If it’s dry, we’re more or less in the mix.”
Leclerc compounded his problems by spinning into a barrier shortly after Q3 began. “The very first out-lap was extremely tricky and it was very difficult to switch on the tyres,” he said.
“I tried to be a bit aggressive, but obviously I lost it out of turn eight, and that compromised a little bit our quali because then the steering wheel was a little bit bent. But all in all I don’t think there was any miracles, there wasn’t much more we could have done.”
However after falling short of his expectations in the previous two qualifying sessions, Leclerc was encouraged by his pace when the track was dry.
“Obviously on my side again I didn’t maximise qualifying, which I’m not happy with,” he acknowledged, “but if I have to look at the positives it’s that I think on the dry, I did some big steps forward.
“On that I’m happy because I’ve been working a lot on the preparation of the tyres in the dry and it seems to be paying off for today at least, but let’s see tomorrow.”
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