Carlos Sainz Jr was disappointed to end the qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps down in fifteenth position, but felt he did get the most out of his Scuderia Toro Rosso STR11 during the session.
The Spaniard admitted before the weekend that he expected a tough weekend, especially as they are running with the 2015 Ferrari power unit that is by far the least powerful on the grid, but Sainz is also scratching his head to find reasons why the STR11 is not performing in the middle sector of the lap that does not rely on engine power.
“It’s being a very tough weekend for us, maybe even a bit more than expected, and it’s disappointing not to be able to fight to get into Q3,” said Sainz.
“On one side I’m happy because I know I’ve extracted the maximum out of the car today, but on the other side I’m sad to see us sitting in P15, a second off Q3. It’s not good enough.
“There’s a lot of analysis going on right now inside the team to see where we are losing so much performance – we know the reason for half of it, it’s due to the 2015 power unit, but we need to understand why we are not performing as expected in Sector 2.”
Sainz does not expect his weekend to get any easier during Sunday’s Grand Prix, but is hopeful making the right strategy calls could get him close to the top ten, something he will be fighting hard for.
“We’ve been slow all weekend so tomorrow’s race will be difficult,” said Sainz. “I’m confident that a right strategy will get us close to the top ten, but it won’t be easy to finish in the points.
“Having said that, we will give it our all and fight hard to finish as high up as possible.”
