Carlos Sainz doesn’t hide disappointment for P4 in qualifying: “Q3 did not go perfectly”

Carlos Sainz could not hide his disappointment at the conclusion of the qualifying session for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Not so much for the result, since the Ferrari driver will be lining up fourth in the first race of the 2024 Formula 1 season, but for the way it came about.

The pole position of Max Verstappen and Red Bull confirmed the expectations of the eve, but the feeling is that today the SF-24 could have had the potential to aspire to beat the RB20 of the three-time world champion, especially after Charles Leclerc had managed to stay ahead of him in Q2.

At the crucial moment, in Q3, the right punch was missing from both of the Red cars, but particularly from the Spanish son of a racer, who not only was overtaken by the Dutchman and his teammate but also by the Mercedes of George Russell, with whom he will share the second row on the starting grid of Sakhir.

What bothered Carlos Sainz was precisely not being able to find the typical step that usually materializes in Q3: “Everyone was expecting Max’s pole, but it’s true that after the runs of Q1 and Q2 I felt in the fight for the pole. Then, for some reason that I still do not understand, we did not find those two or three tenths that we normally find in Q3,” said Carlos to the microphones of Sky Sport F1.

At the moment, the Ferrari driver cannot explain this situation, which curiously he shares with his teammate. If he repeated the time from Q2, Charles Leclerc did not even manage to do that, which is a real shame because the Monegasque would have made the pole by repeating the time of the second segment.

“I did a very conservative lap in Q2 to save that set of tires for the race and without pushing the car to the max, I did 1’29″5. Then in Q3, when I pushed to do a good lap, I did 1’29″5 again. There’s something we need to understand because it was a good qualifying, but Q3 did not go perfectly,” concluded Carlos Sainz.