The Spanish Ferrari driver suffered a serious accident that made him lose a lot of confidence with his car, but he made up for it on Saturday by getting a second position at the time of setting the best lap of the weekend.
Carlos Sainz expressed his intention to go all out from the start, appealing to the comeback spirit of his soccer team, Real Madrid, and he did just that in Miami. With everything in his hands to get pole position, the man from Madrid set out to fly with the F1-75 , but it was not enough to beat the current leader of the championship and his teammate, Charles Leclerc.
The 27-year-old will start from the front row of the grid on Sunday, although he is keen to see how the event unfolds: “It hasn’t been easy, since Free Practice 3 I’ve taken it easy. I think it’s going to be a day interesting with everything that’s going on this weekend.
“I haven’t done any long runs yet,” he continued as soon as he got out of the car. “I haven’t put the fuel in the car and I’ve tested it, so tomorrow’s laps on the grid will be the first time I can get that feeling, and that could be quite challenging.
“But at the same time, I feel confident with the car. It feels good to drive here, so I think we can do a good job,” explained Sainz , who set a 1m28.986s as the fastest time at the end of the final Q3.
He got that time at the last moment, when the track was improving as he gained rubber. Such a performance was not easy for the Ferrari driver after Friday’s accident, as he himself admits: “Building something from yesterday’s big accident, it was not easy at all to regain confidence on a circuit as difficult as this one in Miami” .
“I stayed calm until the third qualifying round. I think I put in a couple of good laps, not enough for pole position, but considering where I was coming from yesterday, I’ll take it,” Sainz said.
“In Q3 I got back to where I wanted to be, I had a long way to go in the last corner and I tried to do something different in the final attempt, but I have a good position for tomorrow,” continued the Ferrari man before going on to prepare with his engineers the Sunday race.
“It was important to make a good qualifying, we are in the fight, although I am going blind to the race because I have not tested the car with a full tank or with the tires [in long run]. I have done good races like that in the past”, sentenced the Spanish pilot.
