Carlos Sainz will start from fourth place in the Bahrain Grand Prix of Formula 1. The result fell short of the potential he felt in the Ferrari SF-24, finishing exactly one-tenth of a second behind his teammate Charles Leclerc, who will start in second place – and 0.328s behind Max Verstappen’s pole position (Red Bull).
In an interview with the official website of the premier category, the Spanish driver said that there was not the expected progress in Q3: ‘There is definitely something to analyze. After Q2, I was very confident that a low 1m29s was possible in this car and in these conditions. For some reason that I don’t fully understand, we were not able to find 0.2s or 0.3s going into Q2, which is usually the progress you find. So it’s something to analyze carefully, but other than that, I think we have been very solid throughout the weekend. We are in the top four of a very tight field, so it’s something to be proud of, and now I look forward to the race’.
For the race, Sainz believes that, aside from Red Bull and Verstappen, there could be a very open fight: ‘With Red Bull, Checo [Pérez] starts from behind, but with new tires, so he will also be difficult to beat, while everyone else… we just need to be concerned that Max has a completely different race pace from the rest of the field, but everyone else is there to fight. We will do the best race possible and see where that takes us’.
