Despite qualifying down in sixteenth on Saturday, Carlos Sainz Jr admitted it was better than he had been expecting after a tough weekend so far at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza for the Scuderia Toro Rosso team.
The Spaniard will move up to fifteenth as a result of Romain Grosjean’s gearbox penalty, but Sainz admitted he was satisfied to get out of Q1 after struggling to better nineteenth during Friday’s practice sessions as the team struggled with their underpowered 2015 Ferrari power unit.
“P16 is not such a disappointing result if you look at where we were yesterday, so we can be a bit happy because yesterday we couldn’t go further than P19, so we’ve done some good work and made some progress,” said Sainz.
“We battled our way through to Q2 and this was our target, so I’m satisfied to have got the most out of the car today.
“The only thing is that this isn’t where we’d like to be, when we’ve been fighting for Q3’s and P8’s all year long up until now… I’d like to be fighting for the top ten, but this is where we are right now, unfortunately.
“Let’s see what we can do tomorrow: it will certainly be a tough race but anything can happen!”
