Carlos Sainz will be on the first row of the starting grid for the Las Vegas Grand Prix this Sunday morning, at 7 a.m. French time. The Ferrari driver is pleased with his performance, similar to that of last year, which he was unable to take advantage of after damaging his chassis on Friday on a drain.
“It was very tricky. It was a close and difficult qualifying, I was a little closer to pole than I thought. I'm very happy, we start in a good position tomorrow. I was already second l “Last year but I was 12th on the grid because of the famous drain. Tomorrow I will be second and I want to do better.” Sainz said.
“We must remain confident that we will be able to fight even more at the front tomorrow than today. We will have a chance of victory and that will be the objective. Today, Mercedes managed very well to put the tires were up to temperature, they took us three tenths in the first sector, but we're starting from scratch tomorrow.”
The Spaniard makes no difference between aiming for victory and beating McLaren for the championship: “I think we need a victory. To beat McLaren, we can't afford to just be ahead of them because there is a big gap. We then go to Qatar which will not be a good track for us so we need a win.”
Charles Leclerc, on the other hand, was frustrated with his qualifying session, during which he failed to put the tires in the correct operating window. It was impossible for him to find rhythm from his second lap on the track.
“I had the same problem as at the start of the year when things weren't going well in qualifying, this weekend I wasn't able to get the tires up to temperature. We're very fast after four or five laps but we don't have that time” Leclerc told Canal+.
“I didn't do a good job on that, Carlos managed to get them up to temperature better than me. This was also the case in FP3 and FP2, I tried to work but it didn't do anything . I have hope for tomorrow because we have good performances in the race.”
Beaten by George Russell and Pierre Gasly on the grid, in addition to his teammate, the Monegasque salutes the performances of his rivals: “Pierre was exceptional quite honestly, George did a very good job.”
“There is something with the tires, they had more difficulty than us all year with degradation but here, it was the warming up that counted and they were better, I took seven tenths in the first sector.”
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