Carlos Sainz rued even with set-up changes on his Ferrari the team couldn’t solve its “fundamental issues” at the Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix.
Ferrari and its drivers feared long ago that the high-speed cornering configuration of the Lusail International Circuit would represent a bogey track for the team.
Essentially that has come to pass with the Scuderia off the pace of McLaren and Mercedes across all sessions thus far.
Despite having the opportunity to make changes after the Sprint ahead of GP qualifying, Sainz explained there’s little more Ferrari can do to improve.
“We definitely tried quite a few things, both on setup, but also in tyre preparation, it just didn’t seem to change our fundamental issues,” he said.
“I think when you’re talking about tyre preparation, you’re talking about the last tenth, while when you lack three or four tenths, and you see all the medium speed corners, you’re just lacking minimum speeds and a bit of three-corner balance, and you realise that maybe just it’s not quite in there.
“It just seems like our balance, or overloading the car in this long combined, 5th/6th gear corners, doesn’t seem to be performing as well as it should.
“I think we’ve tried everything possible with a soft tyre to switch it on, better, faster, slower, out laps, anything you can imagine.
“And we just simply seem to be finding a bit of a hard limit with the lap time that we could produce, in particularly with Charles, with the new floor, and also me with a bit of a more difficult session than yesterday. But it is what it is.”
Sainz explains factor that cost him one spot on the F1 Qatar GP grid
In the end, Sainz qualified seventh for the Qatar GP, half a second off of the pace set by George Russell and Max Verstappen at the front of the grid.
However, the Spaniard felt that he should be starting one positon higher and questioned why Ferrari sent him out in Q3 without the opportunity of getting a tow.
“I think I should have qualified P6 instead of P7,” he said.
“I went into the last lap of Q3 without a car in front, a tow in front, I don’t know why we were leading the pack, and that’s normally a couple of tenths in the straight for free.
“We missed a bit on that but, at the same time, it was a good lap, more or less what the car could achieve.
“So far, I think we’re maximizing everything, but maximising everything, as I said, it might not be enough.”
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