New qualifying format fatal for Carlos Sainz in Hungary: "I didn't handle the medium tire well"

New qualifying format fatal for Carlos Sainz in Hungary: “I didn’t handle the medium tire well”. New qualifying format fatal for Carlos.

Disappointing Qualifying for Ferrari
Charles Leclerc in sixth, Carlos Sainz in eleventh. That’s the outcome of the Experimental Qualifying in the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring circuit, where drivers were obliged to use the hard tires in Q1 and the mediums in Q2, with the soft tire sets only available for Q3. Making Sainz’s elimination in Q2 even more bitter is the fact that in Q3, three customer teams of the Maranello-based Scuderia secured spots: the ‘usual’ Nico Hulkenberg, as well as the Alfa Romeos of Guan Yu Zhou and Valtteri Bottas. The Chinese driver even pulled off a stunning fifth overall performance ahead of Charles Leclerc in Q3.

For now, the outlook is decidedly negative for the team led by Frederic Vasseur, who had aimed to secure both cars in the top two rows, a goal only achieved by McLaren, which seems to have experienced a performance surge. Lando Norris finished just 85 thousandths of a second behind Lewis Hamilton, with Oscar Piastri further behind, but tomorrow’s second row will be all papaya.

Carlos Sainz analyzed his Q2 elimination, falling short by 2 thousandths in favor of his compatriot Fernando Alonso, in an interview with Sky Sport F1:

“Two thousandths is very little. Just lowering the time by a tenth would have put me much further ahead. But that’s how it is. It’s a shame we had to do Q2 on the mediums. I didn’t feel comfortable with them all weekend. I struggled a lot in sector 1, even more than with the hard tire. In a regular Qualifying, I could have done better, but with this format where you have to go through various sessions with different tires, I suffered from the medium tire. I didn’t feel good with it. As for the step back from 2022 when I was second on Saturdays? Today, there’s wind, there are long corners. We know our balance isn’t ideal. The grid has evolved a lot since last year, we’re all much closer. Our rivals are doing well, just look at the performances of McLaren and Alfa Romeo. That’s how it is this year, it’s all very tight.” – the Ferrari man pointed out at the end of the Qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.