The Spanish driver will start his last Italian GP as a Ferrari driver from P5, right next to Lewis Hamilton, the driver set to replace him. In spite of a small trip in the gravel during Q1, it was a smooth session for Sainz, comfortably through to Q3 unlike his latest Dutch outing, which had seen him start from P11.
The future Williams driver discussed his day after the end of the qualifying session, mentioning that his Q1 issue wasn’t related to G forces taking him by surprise: “No, not at all. It was just a small moment in the first lap, just bottoming out in a curb, but from there on I felt I was flat out and in a good place with the car.
“I did some strong laps in Q2, then in Q3 this cloud started to arrive, the temperature started to drop, the grip was a lot higher. That’s why you saw us going a lot quicker in Q3. But unfortunately, in our car it just induced a lot of understeer in the two Lesmos and Parabolica and it meant that we couldn’t get the car turned.”
Sainz explained that the speed and feeling he found in his SF-24 in the final moments of the session were not enough to achieve a better starting position due to the severe speed losses at the aforementioned turns:
“Did a good purple sector 1 in that last lap, which I thought I was on for pole, but then even if we added a lot of balance, a lot of flap to the car in the last run, still the Lesmos and the Parabolica gave me big understeer and I couldn’t get the car turned and the lap didn’t quite click.”
Only 0.140s separate Sainz from pole sitter Lando Norris, for a very tight gap between the top 5 that leaves his former teammate extremely disappointed. Had the 30-year-old been as quick as teammate Leclerc in the last two sectors, he would have taken pole.
“Frustrating, because it’s one tenth and a half. I had a big understeer moment in turn 6, Lesmo 1, another big understeer moment in Parabolica, which cost me probably half a tenth to a tenth each and when you see the gaps, then you realise that if we maybe would have nailed the balance in the high speed, we could have been fighting for it.
“But I guess it’s going to be a similar situation for everyone and it just shows how sensitive these cars are to anything that happens with the weather,” he added matter-of-factly, already focused on the main event up next.
In his opinion, there isn’t a favorite set to roll out on track, someone who is definitely bound to become a winner in Monza tomorrow, due to the closeness of the top 4 teams. As a consequence, he believes the outcome of the race will be mostly decided by tyre management abilities
“I think we are all within a couple of tenths. Tomorrow is going to be all about who manages the graining better and normally in that case it’s the one who gets clean air and manages to do a better job. It’s going to be a very tough, very tight race across eight cars and it’s going to be all about seeing who manages to get rid of the graining for tomorrow, because once the graining appears we have one or two seconds of deg which we’ve never seen before.”
