Sainz rues pole position near miss after close-fought qualifying

17:52, 22 Nov

byBen Winship

Carlos Sainz thought he could have qualified on pole position during a wet and slippery Las Vegas GP qualifying session.

"I thought it was a pole-worthy lap."

- Carlos Sainz

The Williams driver lines up in P3 ahead of Saturday’s Grand Prix but briefly held provisional pole before Max Verstappen and the eventual polesitter Lando Norris jumped ahead of him in the closing stages.

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Reflecting on the session Sainz said: “It was a very good lap. I thought it was a pole-worthy lap.

“When I closed the lap, I saw myself in P1, and then I realised I was the first car across the flag.

“And yeah, maybe that was not going to last very long with these two guys coming behind, but it felt like a really good quali.”

For a brief moment it looked as though Williams were on track to claim their first pole position since the 2014 Austrian GP, where the team secured a 1-2 courtesy of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas.

The top 3 in qualifying for the Las Vegas GP - Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Sainz's P3 seemed to be in the balance after he was also summoned the stewards after he appeared to have impeded Lance Stroll in Q1. After reviewing the incident the stewards deemed no further action was necessary and Sainz is confirmed to be starting from P3.

Williams excel in the wet

Many of Sainz's rivals revealed that the slippery Las Vegas conditions were among the most challenging in their career. Max Verstappen said the conditions were 'not a lot of fun to drive' while George Russell proposed a F1 rule change to help make the tyres more useable in similar conditions in the future.

The Spaniard added: “If anything, I think we were more competitive on the extreme wet tyres in Q1 and Q2. I wish it would have stayed extreme wet because that was the tyre that gave me the best feeling and the best confidence.

“Every time we were hitting the board, we were P1. But yeah, on Inters I was expecting to go slower given our FP3 performance wasn't great, and in the end it turned out to be just fine.

“But yeah in the end, it couldn’t be.”

Sainz's teammate Alex Albon found the wall in Q1 and brought out the yellow flags. He starts Saturday's Grand Prix from P16.

The Spaniard's qualifying result in Las Vegas is his second best since making the move to Williams this season. He qualified P2 in Azerbaijan, which he converted into a podium finish in Baku.

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