Carlos Sainz is worried his pace will be compromised after missing almost all of first practice on Thursday in Monaco.
The Spaniard was sidelined by a battery issue in his McLaren and would only emerge in the final moments to complete an installation lap.
While that might be less critical at most circuits nowadays, on the streets of Monte Carlo confidence is crucial and Sainz concedes he is behind the rest in that area.
“Monaco is the last place you want to miss FP1 and standstill for one and a half hours while the others get laps on you,” he was quoted by Crash.net.
“I am 30 or 40 laps behind, but the mechanics did a brilliant job to get me back out on track right at the end to get an installation lap, but those 30 or 40 laps that I am behind are going to hurt further into the weekend. Hopefully, we can recover little by little.”
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Sainz can be buoyed by his performance in the afternoon, however, where he finished just 0.026s behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris.
And though the British team failed to get a car into the top 10, Carlos, who has made Q3 and scored points on every trip to the principality, is still upbeat.
“On one side it looks difficult as we haven’t been in the top 10 or Lando hasn’t been in the top 10 in FP1 or FP2,” he said. “But at the same time, if it is close, and it is pretty close, we could be up there.
“As soon as we get my confidence up and my lap mileage up maybe all of sudden we can turn up a bit of pace.”
