Sainz “made up the maximum he could” in climb from tenth to fourth

Carlos Sainz Jnr says he made up the most places he could have hoped to in the sprint race after a crash in qualifying meant he started 10th.

The Ferrari driver passed Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Kevin Magnussen, Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris to finish the sprint race in fourth place and secure a second row start alongside Sergio Perez in tomorrow’s grand prix.

Sainz said he could not have realistically hoped for a better result out of the sprint race after his mistake in Friday’s qualifying session.

“We made up the maximum places that we could make up today,” said Sainz. “It was a solid race, no issues.

“Just getting to learn the car, keep learning the car in the dry because we’ve done very little laps. Today was a positive race.

“The only negative is that the Red Bulls seem to have a bit more race pace than us here and that we’re going to need to find some pace in the dry if we want to put up a fight with them.”

Asked what Ferrari need to do and can do to prevent Red Bull from beating them during Sunday’s 63 lap race, Sainz said that Ferrari need to address the graining issues they experienced in the sprint

“[It’s] a bit of driving. A bit of maybe fine-tuning with the settings of the car that we can tune,” said Sainz.

“There are not many, but we will try our best and see how we can erase this front-right graining that seemed to penalise us more than the Red Bull.”

Having passed five drivers in 21 laps, Sainz says the sprint race was another example of the new 2022 technical regulations designed to improve racing in Formula 1 appear to be working as intended.

“I must say these cars are making a huge difference to make the overtaking possible,” he said. “So from [my view], another test that I would praise Formula 1 for the changes that they’ve done with these cars.”

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