During the first practice session, Carlos Sainz handed over his car to Robert Shwartzman and during the second practice session Sainz was only sixteenth. It clearly doesn’t look good and Carlos Sainz also realizes this, who even fears that he will not make it to Q3 during qualifying.
“Unfortunately we didn’t look very competitive yet,” Sainz told ‘F1 TV’ after his only practice session. “We’re going to have to find some lap time, some downforce and balance because today was a difficult day for the team.”
“I think we saw something similar in Hungary, where we also went to a track with more downforce. For some reason, when we have a bigger rear wing, we don’t have as much downforce as the others.”
“So we have some homework to do to understand this, why we slide more than the others. If we want to compete at the front during qualifying and on Sunday, we will have to take a big step forward.”
Sainz fears that Ferrari, like in Hungary, will have difficulties getting into Q3.
“There is room for improvement, but when you look back to Hungary, we had problems getting into Q3,” said Sainz. “It could be the same here, especially given how close everyone is to each other.”