One of the major winners of qualifying turned out to be Carlos Sainz Jr. The Spaniard qualified sixth ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix after tricky conditions hampered the field.
The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver seemed to relish in the cooler conditions, picking up his best qualifying result of the year. He continued his three race run of beating Daniil Kvyat on Saturday, a record he’ll hope to extend as the season goes on.
“Wow, what a qualifying session, and what a result… I feel so good! If I say the truth, this morning we thought we wouldn’t even make it into Q3 after seeing our pace in FP3 but suddenly in Quali everything turned around.”
Sainz finished all three sessions within the top ten, remaining fairly anonymous until the dying minutes of Q3. His lap leaves him as the highest driver not from one of the top three teams in the championship.
“It was probably the toughest qualifying session of my career” Sainz continued. “To judge each time what tyre to choose, which line to take, see where it was dry and where it was still wet, to cool the tyres, then heat them… It was very, very tricky!”
“But we were in the right place at the right moment every time, we got through every Quali session and we ended up in a great position for tomorrow! I just hope that in the race we can maintain the good feeling we found today in Quali.”
