Scuderia Ferrari had their best qualifying of the season so far in their opinion, with home-boy Carlos Sainz Jr. lining up in sixth and Charles Leclerc in an immaculate fourth at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Ferrari appear to have cemented their place as the third fastest qualifying car, with Leclerc now qualifying in the top four for every race except one so far this season. However this second row start could be the most influential yet, as overtaking at the Spanish Grand Prix is known to be extremely difficult.
Leclerc will be more than happy come the end of the race tomorrow, to finish where he is starting from.
“It was a good qualifying and I’m very happy with the result. Looking at the gap between us and the top three, P4 is a solid result today.”
“My Q2 lap was very clean and that’s good for the tyres that I will use for the start. I am concentrating on this a lot because tomorrow it will be important to start on a tyre with little degradation.”
“As a team, we start from P4 and P6, which is positive. Our race pace has been competitive and if we manage our tyres in the same way as we did yesterday, it should look good. Our target is to bring home as many points as possible. Overall it has been a good weekend so far and I hope that we finish it on a high.”
“We are in a good position to fight tomorrow” – Sainz Jr.
Sainz Jr. will be starting his home race directly behind teammate Leclerc after a strong qualifying for the Spaniard, only just missing out on fifth place, which is where he started the last grand prix.
Sainz is feeling strong in his Ferrari this weekend, he will be hoping to try and break into the top five early on in the race.
“In general, today was a good qualifying session for the team, on a track where car balance and car performance in cornering are important and the SF21 is performing well. From my side I had a strong qualifying all the way through and I felt I could push the car.”
“I managed to go through Q1 with only one set and a couple of strong laps in Q2 put us through to the top 10. After a decent first run in Q3, I was looking forward to improving my lap time in the last attempt but due to small details I didn’t quite manage to nail it. Despite that, there are lots of positives to take from today and we are in a good position to fight tomorrow in the race. Let’s go!”
