Carlos Sainz has claimed team-mate Charles Leclerc’s qualifying brilliance has made Ferrari appear to possess the fastest Formula 1 car at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Leclerc maintained his supreme recent record under single-lap conditions in Baku as he surged to a commanding fourth consecutive pole position at the street venue.
The Monegasque seemed to have close competition throughout the three practice sessions, but he dominated proceedings to hold a three-tenth margin over the rest.
Leclerc managed to improve over two-tenths on his last attempt in Q3, but he later expressed that there was no “magic answer” to explain his sensational streak here.
However, Sainz, who qualified third behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, has heralded Leclerc as being the one who made the difference amidst a tight contest at the front.
“I think it’s extremely tight,” Sainz said regarding the pecking order this weekend.
“Charles was mentioning it’s one of his best tracks and he tends to always find a couple of tenths on the Ferrari around here and that probably makes us look like the fastest car.
“But I think it’s honestly within two-tenths between the top four cars and it makes it an exciting battle and an exciting race for tomorrow.”
Sainz has pinpointed braking as the predominant area where Leclerc has an edge over him around the tight and twisting Baku streets as he lagged four-tenths behind.
“It’s all about braking here in Baku and having the confidence to stop the car as late as possible, trusting that the car then is going to turn into the corner,” he explained.
“And yeah, that’s where he excels around here and where he’s particularly comfortable from the beginning of FP1.
“From my side, I don’t know why I don’t have exactly that same feeling that I have in Singapore, maybe on the higher downforce, or in Monaco with higher downforce, but it’s what it is.
“I still think I made some good progress. I’m going into tomorrow into the top three. So, yeah, I still think we’re in the mix.”
The Spaniard has revealed that he was able to unlock more potential from his Ferrari during the closing segment, but it came too late to mount a challenge to Leclerc.
“I managed to find a couple of things in Q3 that gave me a bit more pace than what I was showing in Q1 and Q2,” he divulged. “Probably found it a bit too late.
“By the time I found them, I wish I would have had more laps before to get used to driving the car a bit like that. And I felt like I was more competitive.
“But, you know, it’s always been a track that I struggle a lot at. It’s the best track for Charles and one of the worst ones for me.
“It’s something that I keep working on around here because from FP1, I always tend to lack a bit of rhythm and I need to build it up.”
Asked to expand on what he discovered through the sessions, Sainz indicated that it was about incremental steps to tailor his driving to the circuit’s unique demands.
“Nothing that I can reveal obviously in a press conference, because I would be revealing a bit too much, but just little things,” he elucidated.
“Little things that you can do in quali to get the car to stop a bit better in the long braking zones, that gives you more confidence to brake those three to five metres later that is fundamental.
“It’s interesting because I normally feel very comfortable in city tracks like Singapore, Monaco or any, but Baku has never been, in my 10 years in Formula 1, one of those.
“But every year I come back here trying to improve myself, trying to find more of an edge in my driving, but it just doesn’t come very natural to me.”
