Sainz thought he was heading for pole at one stage
Carlos Sainz thought he was heading for pole position at Monza before understeer at the Lesmos and the Parabolica spoiled his final lap.
The Ferrari driver slipped back to fifth, just pipped by his team mate Charles Leclerc.
Sainz, who ran wide into the gravel on his first lap in Q1, said that cloud cover changed track conditions in Q3, and induced understeer.
“There was just a small moment in the first lap, just bottoming out in a kerb,” he said when asked by this writer about his session. “But from there on, I felt I was flat out 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 understeering in the two Lesmos and Parabolica, and it meant that we couldn’t get the car turned.
“I did a good purple sector one 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.”
He added: “Every time I was on new tyres, I was top three, and in Q3 when I when I put new tyres, I was top three, top four, top five.
“But the mistake was not to, not to add enough front end to the car through qualifying, especially when the track temp dropped, because I’m pretty sure that understood what cost me today a better qualifying.”
Sainz admitted that it was tough to take given how close the front of the grid is.
“It’s frustrating, because it’s one-tenth and a half,” he said.
“I had a big understeer moment in Turn 6, Lesmo One, 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 be a similar situation for everyone. And it just shows how sensitive these cars are to anything that happens with the weather.”
Sainz stressed that Sunday’s race will be decided by tyre management.
“I think tomorrow is going to be all about who manages the graining better,” he said. “And normally, in that case, it’s the one who gets clean air manages to do a better job.
“So I think 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 , because once the graining appears, we have one or two seconds of deg, which we’ve never seen before.”
Regarding the latest floor update he said: “There’s definitely low bouncing for us here this weekend.
“So TBC if it’s the new floor, and we need to go to other tracks to double check, because here anyway, has always been low bouncing.
Adam Cooper F1 