McLaren has made huge steps forward - Sainz
- Farhan Khurram
- Nov 3, 2019
- 2 min read
After qualifying 7th with an impressive 1:32.847s in Q3, Carlos Sainz was extremely pleased with the performance of his MCL34 and the "huge steps" in performance made by his team over the course of the year.
YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO READ: Valtteri Bottas on pole for the 2019 US GP
Once done with the qualifying, Sainz expressed his thoughts to the media.
“Very pleased, the two laps in Q3 felt amazing." said the Spaniard.
"I suddenly found some two or three extra tenths in myself and in the car that I didn’t expect to be there, so to go down to a 32, a 32.8 on the board, it felt really good."
"Today with the car, it was just nice to drive. With this wind direction from the north, the car switches on"
It's worth mentioning that McLaren managed to qualify just P13 and P17 in Austin last year, compared to an incredible P7 and P8 result this year.
The massive performance gains by the British team have helped them secure 4th position in the constructors' standings this year, with the MCL34 undoubtedly being the 4th quickest car on the grid, often termed as "best of the rest."
As a matter of fact, Sainz's qualifying lap was merely 8 tenths slower than the pole lap time, set by Valtteri Bottas.
“It’s crazy, 32.8 round here, we got really close to the pole lap of last year I think, so McLaren has made huge steps forward,"
"And today with the car, it was just nice to drive. With this wind direction from the north, the car switches on – for reasons we still don’t understand.” added Sainz.
His teammate, Lando Norris also appeared to be satisfied with the overall qualifying pace of the MCL34. Lando, who surprisingly finished on top of the time-sheets in Q1, managed to secure P8 for tomorrow's race.
Talking to the media after the qualifying, Lando backed his teammate by saying, “It was good for us,”
“Comparing to where we were yesterday, I think we made some good improvements.
"The wind favored us a bit more today, which is good, and bad at the same time.
"Good because we took advantage of it and we have a strong position for tomorrow,
"But the thing is, tomorrow the wind goes back to what it was yesterday. So it’s going to be a bit of a tricky race… but P7 and P8 is the best we could do." said the British driver.
Referring to an upsetting result in Mexico, where although, both the cars had managed to qualify within the top 10, McLaren overall failed to score a single point. Adding insult to the injury was a disastrous pit-stop, that later contributed to Norris' retirement from the race.
Norris further added to his comments, “[In Mexico] we had a good start, a good opening lap, so I just need to try and repeat that,”
“Turn 1’s quite tricky because of the crest, so it’s easy to lock up and run wide, so I need to make sure that doesn’t happen...
"But apart from that, just focus on our own race, don’t repeat Mexico and I think we can be good.” he concluded.
Comentários