Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz have shown different opinions to their performance in qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix.
Verstappen set a lap time of 1:37.583 to finish ninth fastest, while Sainz could not get into Q3, finishing in 11th after missing out on the final session by five hundredths of a second with a lap time of 1:37.652.
“I’m pleased and happy with today’s qualifying result,” Verstappen said. “Especially after a difficult day yesterday, where we were struggling a lot, to come back and get through to Q3 is something I honestly didn’t expect.
“In addition to that, I’d say this is one of the most difficult qualifying sessions of the season: the track is very slippery and as soon as you brake a metre earlier or later, you immediately lose a lot of lap time and lock-up the tyres, so you really have to be very focused and that’s what I did to end up P9.
“For sure tomorrow’s race will be another challenge because we are all very close, but I’m ready for it and hopefully we can carry on scoring good points.”
Another problem with the Sochi track is the amount of traffic that a driver can encounter, something Sainz was affected by on his flying lap.
“I’m disappointed with not getting into Q3 today, because we’ve been very fast the whole weekend and we had the pace to end up in the top ten,” Sainz said.
“I was putting a good lap together in my last Q2 effort but in the last sector I found some traffic that slowed me down.
“I will go back to the hotel a bit angry tonight, but the positive thing is that we know that we have the pace and we can perform well tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to the race.”
