Carlos Sainz admits securing P7 on the grid for the Mexican Grand Prix may have come at a strategic price.
The Spaniard continued his run of ‘best of the rest’ places but was forced to run on the soft tyre in Q2, meaning he’ll have to start on the least-favoured compound available.
To begin with, however, he was buoyed by the result and by how McLaren approached the session even if their initial gamble didn’t pay off.
“It’s been a good day for us,” he said. “The fact that I gave it a go on the medium tyre in Q2 is a sign that we are on the right path and it just shows the confidence that we have in the car.
“Without the traffic in Sector 3, I would have been close to the cut, but risking Q3 with a second run on the medium was a bit unnecessary given the pace I knew I had on the soft.”
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In fact, Sainz highlighted McLaren’s pace by sitting 11th after the first run on the yellow-striped rubber, only fractionally behind Sergio Perez and the two Renaults on the faster softs.
“Anyway, another final good lap means I start behind the top teams tomorrow and that gives us a good fighting position,” he added.
“We will have to manage the tyres carefully but I’m very happy with today’s result. I’m proud of the whole team and of how we keep on pushing. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish it off.”
Doing so, however, is going to be very difficult as those just outside the top 10 will be able to run the perfect strategy while both McLaren’s and both Toro Rosso’s are more compromised.
“Starting tomorrow on the soft is the worst scenario, it means the one-stop will probably be extremely tricky,” Sainz explained.
“If the medium doesn’t grain tomorrow, there’s people going to be trying to do a one-stop very easily. We will see what we need to do.
“It’s going to be a challenging day tomorrow, hopefully, we can use our pace advantage to beat them. On strategy, we are already 10 seconds down on them.”