The Ferrari drivers believe the high altitude in Mexico City affected the performance of their car, leading to their worst qualifying performance so far this year.
Carlos Sainz Jnr took fifth on the grid, two places ahead of Charles Leclerc who was out-qualified by Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas. The pair have only had a worse combined qualifying result on weekends where they have taken grid penalties.
The Ferrari has been difficult to drive since the weekend began, said Sainz. He believes the thin air at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, which is 2,200 metres above sea level, has affected their car’s performance more than their rivals.
“I think we’ve lost quite a bit of performance in high altitude,” said Sainz told media including RaceFans. “We need to see because I think it’s just a one-off. I think it’s a track that doesn’t suit us very well. But we’ve tried to do the best we could.”
Sainz said the team expected the altitude would be a problem for them before the weekend began, and believes it has affected the car’s performance in more than one way. “Altitude shouldn’t affect us in terms of cornering speed so my guess is that maybe something going on with the tyres and probably also the engine,” he explained.
“I think the altitude for this engine is not going exactly how we wanted. We knew before coming here we were going to need to take some compromises. And then tyres and the car over kerbs and bumps was just difficult to drive.”
Both drivers looked ill at ease with the car in high speed corners. Sainz admitted “it was a fight.”
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“That’s why I couldn’t put a lap together. We will dig deep, but at the same time we shouldn’t get too discouraged. I think it’s a very particular track, a very particular scenario and we need to analyse what we could have done better around here and see tomorrow the race becomes better.”
Sainz took pole position at the Circuit of the Americas a week ago but was half a second off the top spot today. “There was probably a bit more out there but the car has been difficult to drive and normally, when it’s difficult, it’s difficult to put laps together like we did in Austin,” he said.
“Today there’s probably a couple of tenths in the bag, but for how difficult it was, I think I was extracting out there quite a lot from it. We just need to have a look.”
Leclerc said it was been clear from the beginning of practice the…
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