Carlos Sainz Uncovers Ferrari Struggles Ahead Of Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Ferrari are still struggling despite sandbagging rumours.

Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz uncovered the team's struggles from the qualifying session for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix earlier today.

The Maranello-based squad finished in second and fifth place in qualifying with Charles Leclerc and Sainz, respectively. However, Leclerc is taking a ten-place grid penalty so will be starting in twelfth place tomorrow. 

However, Sainz has detailed further issues for the team. During his post-qualifying interview, the Spanish driver explained:

“In FP3 I had a decent feeling with the car but, for some reason, sector one was a big weakness for me today.

“I couldn’t get the tyres to give me the feeling to push in Turn 1 and 2 and in the high-speed every time I was pushing a bit too much I was snapping and having big moments so, in the end, I was losing 0.3s or 0.4s, which is a lot for just one sector.

“There was clearly something there that I didn’t understand or wasn’t able to put together. I was playing a lot with preparation laps, out laps and never switched the tyres on for the first sector. Other than sector one it seemed to be OK, so without this tomorrow we can have it good.”

Sainz continued:

“Charles showed what the car is capable of – so I think if we had a clean day we would be starting P2.

“So, we didn’t have a great qualifying, I had to use two sets [of tyres] in Q2, because of that big moment, I didn’t have two new sets for Q3 and we actually decided to save one.”