Carlos Sainz admits he was not “surprised to miss out on Q3” after encountering a “very difficult” qualifying at the Qatar Grand Prix.
The Ferrari driver was unable to match team-mate Charles Leclerc and his final flying run in the second stage left him vulnerable to those behind in the dying embers of Q2.
Sainz was subsequently bumped out of the top 10, winding up 12th overall once Red Bull’s Sergio Perez eventually had his best lap time deleted for exceeding track limits.
With the Sprint format providing the drivers with only one practice session in unrepresentative conditions, Sainz concedes he was caught out by the cooler track surface present during the qualifying hour.
“Yeah, I had a very difficult qualifying right from the beginning,” he reflected.
“We were struggling quite a bit with the balance. The rear was very, very loose while in FP1 I managed to switch on the tyres and get a decent grip on this new surface.
“When the track temp dropped this afternoon, I just couldn’t find any grip out there, so I struggled quite heavily so I’m not surprised to miss out on Q3.”
Sainz remains optimistic that Ferrari can reverse its fortunes ahead of tomorrow’s Sprint sessions but anticipates it being a tall order to make progress on Sunday.
“Yeah, hopefully we can turn it around for the Sprint tomorrow,” he added. “But definitely Sunday is going to be tricky starting so far back on a difficult track to overtake. My main focus now is to see what we can do better tomorrow.”
Despite comfortably progressing to Q3, Leclerc could only wound up fifth, having only clocked the seventh fastest time. The Monegasque benefitted from both McLaren drivers seeing lap times get removed by the stewards for track limit infringements.
Leclerc echoed his team-mate’s view, citing that Ferrari experienced trouble with generating sufficient heat in the tyres on the opening timed lap of every run in qualifying.
“We had an issue in the high speed on the fast lap which made me downshift while flat out which wasn’t great,” he explained.
“We lost quite a bit there and then we struggled a lot basically with the first timed lap. We were very strong with the second timed lap, but whenever we had to do the lap straight out of the box we were struggling like crazy with the rear tyres.
“So I think that’s the explanation then why we struggled in Q3 because it was then it was basically only one lap on my first run. I had to abort [that] for the same reason, and then on my second run I had no choice but to do one lap so that’s what we did.
“But, yeah, all in all, we maximised what we had. We just have to work tomorrow to find the pace straight away.”
Asked what is possible for the remainder of the weekend due to the limitations imposed on car set-up by parc ferme, Leclerc responded: “Not much, maybe the out-laps… to look at the different out-laps?
“To be honest I don’t think there’s much there. I don’t know really, I don’t have the answer for that.”
