Carlos Sainz can be satisfied after qualifying third for the 2023 Miami Grand Prix, but feels he could’ve fought for a better result has the session not been Red flagged following Charles Leclerc’s crash.
Well we can never know if Carlos Sainz would’ve improved, but let’s take his word for it, as after all, he was in better form compared to Baku a week ago, but to keep matters in perspective, two faster drivers where out of the picture thanks to Charles Leclerc’s crash, the Monegasque himself and Max Verstappen.
Has these two been able to put in a timed lap, the outcome would’ve been different, but both Verstappen and Leclerc have no one to blame but themselves, and this is motorsports, so credit goes to Sainz for keeping it together when his highly rated teammate couldn’t.
“It was coming together as a very good qualifying until the end,” Sainz said in Ferrari‘s media brief. “This P3 is not too bad, but I feel I had very strong pace and maybe we could have fought for more.
“It was an unfortunate moment for Charles but these things can happen and tomorrow we go again. The race will not be an easy one for sure and we’ll keep an eye on changing weather conditions. We’ll fight hard to bring home a good result,” he added.
After qualifying, Sainz was asked if he left anything out there; he responded: “Yeah, plenty, actually today, yes, because obviously with the red flag I think we all had a quite a lot of lap time to come in the second run.
“I was actually doing a very good first sector when the red flag came out, but it’s how it goes,” Sainz concluded.
Charles Leclerc hoping the weather mixes things up
Charles Leclerc added: “I pushed too hard on my last lap in Q3 and there are no excuses to be made. We will start from P7 tomorrow and the weather looks like it could mix things up. I hope to have a clean race and will push to make my way back to the front.”
Frédéric Vasseur, Ferrari’s Team Principal summed his team’s qualifying up; he said: “First of all, well done to Carlos for his best qualifying of the season, even though he might have gone even quicker on his second run.
“We could have had a better team result as it was clear that Charles was also very quick. He was pushing hard as always in the final phase and unfortunately, he hit the wall. However, when you are chasing pole, mistakes can happen.
“The top ten on the grid is certainly unusual, with some of the expected front runners further back, so it looks like being an interesting race tomorrow,” the Frenchman pointed out.
“For our part, we hope to see the fruits of the race preparation we have done between yesterday and today as this will be a tough race in terms of tyre management.
“Then there are the usual scenarios that can arise when racing between the walls, plus there’s a chance of rain tomorrow, which could shake things up as well,” Vasseur concluded.