Carlos Sainz has revealed that he hopes he can be in a position to help Ferrari Formula 1 team-mate Charles Leclerc secure his elusive win at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Leclerc delivered upon his and Ferrari’s blistering speed through practice in qualifying to claim pole position in Monte Carlo for the third time in the last four seasons.
But while he’s no stranger to starting at the front on home soil and the close proximity of the walls limit overtaking avenues, Leclerc hasn’t finished above fourth spot.
However, with Ferrari appearing to possess the fastest car and points leader Max Verstappen starting sixth, Leclerc is in the optimum position to end his winless run.
The Monegasque will share the first row with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, but Sainz is adamant he will do what he can to assist his Ferrari team-mate from third position.
Asked whether he has a chance to take the win, Sainz, who was victorious in Australia earlier on in the campaign, responded: “I think in a normal race it’s impossible.
“And then the focus will be, like I said before, to see what we can do with the two cars to win the race. We shout that he’s in the best possible position to do so.
“Then, obviously, in Monaco you never know. All sorts of things can happen.
“But if I win tomorrow, it’s probably because something weird has happened with Charles, with strategy or with safety cars that I hope they don’t, in a way.
“Obviously, we all want to win, but at the same time I feel like Charles deserves to win in Monaco after his unlucky run.
“He’s been extremely strong all weekend and here in the past. So, yeah, tomorrow is the day to kind of wish that nothing happens and see if we can win with Charles.”
Sainz’s greatest chance to support Leclerc will be to overtake Piastri on the short run down to Sainte Devote and act as a rear gunner to protect his team-mate’s lead.
“We will see what we can do at the start, what we can do with strategy in order to do every single bit possible to Charles to go and get that win,” Sainz reiterated.
“He’s been driving amazing all weekend. I think part of that delta, I think, comes from Charles also being super committed and having a particularly strong weekend this weekend.
“I think he’s been on it since FP1 and he’s been extremely quick. So yeah, we will do everything we can to win the race tomorrow.”
The Spaniard had lagged a considerable distance behind Leclerc throughout pace but was able to recover to end up over two-tenths behind his partner’s benchmark.
But while he was satisfied to overcome his earlier weekend difficulties, Sainz rued encountering problems with his SF-24 at the one round where grid position is vital.
“It’s been a bit of a struggle for me right from the beginning,” he rued. “I haven’t been as confident as I’m normally around Monaco. And yeah, I haven’t been at my best.
“Luckily, we stepped it up for quali and in quali I was feeling one step better. It was a bit too late and I was still lacking those last couple of tenths from confidence.
“A bit unfortunate that the weekend that I’ve struggled the most with the car has to be in Monaco where qualifying is so important.”
Expanding upon the reasons for his troubles, Sainz disclosed that various near misses with the barriers during practice had served to dent his confidence in the car.
Pressed on what he wasn’t receiving from the car to extract the time Leclerc could, Sainz explained: “Just a bit of inconsistency. I’ve had a lot of moments, in practice.
“And when you have so many moments of nearly touching the wall, nearly having a session over, when you’re so close to the walls, this immediately takes away confidence.
“I’ve had a lot of those during the practice, and it meant that for some reason I was just lacking confidence from then onwards.
“But yeah, losing the rear in places where you don’t expect to lose it and never getting quite close to the walls as I wish because I had to leave myself a bit of margin in case the rear was snapping on me. So yeah, as I said, not ideal, but we managed to save it.”
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