Quizzed on whether he had been chasing throughout the session off the back of this, Sainz responded: “I think we looked like the whole session we were just one tenth off – one tenth off, one tenth off, one tenth off.
“Maybe in Q3 when the track temperature dropped a bit with the clouds coming, it went away from us and we started to pick up a lot of understeer, and I couldn’t turn the car in the last two sectors.
FACTS AND STATS: Verstappen endures his worst qualifying in a year as Norris scores back-to-back poles for the first time
“[It’s] a shame because I was quick in Sector 1 but I couldn’t quite make it work around Sector 2 and 3 with the understeer. I didn’t manage to put enough balance on the car to get around them. But, yeah, one tenth off – it is what it is.”
Pushed on whether he felt it was possible to be in the mix for a podium – particularly given how close the field is, with the leading six cars all covered by less than two tenths in qualifying – Sainz commented: “Yeah, I think tomorrow is a completely different day.
“Graining is going to be the order of the day, everyone’s been struggling a lot with deg[radation] since yesterday so I think it’s going to be a very different Monza.”
