Carlos Sainz was ‘best of the rest’ on Saturday, qualifying P4 at the Hungaroring as Ferrari’s pace-related struggles continued.
Ferrari’s weekend has been a mixed bag so far. Sainz topped the first practice session of the weekend, but they’ve seemingly been on the back foot since FP2. The Ferrari duo was split by Lewis Hamilton, who qualified fifth. McLaren emerged as the strongest force on Saturday and they remain the favourites to take the win in Sunday’s race.
“Very happy because we saw clearly from FP2 onwards the McLaren and the Red Bulls were those three, four tenths quicker than us all weekend,” Sainz said after the session.
Although Sainz was pleased with his qualifying effort, it’s evident that Ferrari has lost its early-season performance. Sainz’s P4 lap time was nearly half a second slower than Lando Norris’s pole position time.
“We did our best to improve the car through practice sessions,” he continued. “But the reality is as the track was cooling down through the weekend actually, it was maybe going a bit against us.
“But happy because I’ve done some very good laps in Q1, Q2 and Q3. Very solid session. It’s been a few weekends in a row now that I’m driving well. So, very happy.”
Ferrari brought a modified version of its upgraded floor to Hungary, intending to alleviate the bouncing that’s been hampering its drivers across the last few rounds. However, they are still searching for extra performance, having been leapfrogged by the likes of McLaren in the development race.
Ferrari may benefit from Sergio Perez and George Russell’s surprise Q1 exits. Still, Sainz wasn’t feeling overly optimistic about his chances of reaching the podium in the race, considering Ferrari’s middling pace.
“I think on pure pace it’s going to be almost… not impossible, but very difficult to beat the three top three cars,” he admitted.
“Behind them, there’s going to be a good fight for P4, which might become P3, P2 or P1 if something up front happens.”
