Carlos Sainz secured an impressive second place on the grid for F1 the Las Vegas GP, a position he aims to build upon during the race. With a strong lap time that showed the potential of his Ferrari, Sainz expressed confidence in his ability to compete against pole sitter George Russell and the challenges that lay ahead.
A strong performance from Sainz
After qualifying, Sainz reflected on his performance, stating, “It must have been a good lap. My previous best lap time was a 32.7, so I went down three tenths on that lap and it felt good. I was pushing the limits.
“At one point, I thought I had pole position because I thought I was one of the last ones to cross the line. But then suddenly they told me George was coming, and I knew that the Mercedes had been quick all weekend. They’ve been a bit of a step ahead of us, especially on a single lap.
“We’re taking three or four tenths on them every single lap. And even if my lap from sector two and three onwards is very good, it just looks like sector one, they’ve been a bit too strong for us. But tomorrow everything changes.”
Looking ahead to the race
When discussing the upcoming race, Carlos Sainz was optimistic but realistic about the challenges of F1 the Las Vegas GP circuit. “The race is not won or lost in turn one. At the same time, I feel like this year there’s more grip in turn one than there was last year,” he noted.
“The thing with Vegas is we might wake up tomorrow and the track might be completely dirty again. So no one’s going to know what amount of grip is in turn one.”
Sainz expressed his intention to make a strong start and challenge Russell, saying, “Hopefully I get a good start, and obviously, I can get George into turn one.
“But obviously, at the same time, there’s so little grip and so many unknowns and so much possibility of overtaking around Vegas that it’s also down to a very long race.”
As for his chances against Russell, Sainz was confident. “I think tomorrow we should have the pace to fight for the win,” he asserted.
“At the same time, there’s too many unknowns to confirm or deny that.
“A lot of it will be graining limitation, who can control the graining better, but even if we might see some teams struggling a lot on medium tyres, then the hard resets everything again because no one’s running the hard, and we know that we are not the best team on hard tyres this season.”
