Sainz’s qualy ‘snowballed into a disaster’

Failing to make it out of Q2, Carlos Sainz says he knew from the start of his flying lap that something wasn’t right and from there it “snowballed into a disaster”.

The McLaren driver will line up 13th on the Silverstone grid while his team-mate Lando Norris is eighth.

His best time in Q2, a 1:26.578, was 0.175s shy of making it through to the pole position shoot-out.

“I just felt immediately when I went into Turn 3 I had no rear end in the car,” Sainz said.

“I knew it was going to be a tough lap, and it just snowballed into a disaster.”

A lack of rear end grip has been a problem for Sainz throughout the British Grand Prix weekend.

He explained: “It’s been a bit of a difficult weekend for me, never quite feeling the rear end from the car.

“But apart from that Q1 was very positive, I was feeling like we could have a good qualifying, and then I just went slower with every set.

“I did a 1m26.2s on the first set, and then 1m26.3s, 1m26.5s and 1m26.7s at the end.

“So I just went slower and slower without really knowing why.”

He added: “Normally you improve half a second from Q1 to Q2, but I managed to lose half a second.

“So it’s difficult to explain, and not surprising because we definitely felt [it was] very tricky out there. But we need to explain why.

“Tomorrow should be better, but today I’m definitely not happy.

“Today it’s time to analyse why today was such a disaster in terms of why the balance of the car was changing so much in qualifying – but also knowing tomorrow is going to be an interesting day and we can move forward.”

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