Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

P5 'like a pole position' for Sainz at home race

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Carlos Sainz says qualifying in fifth place at his home grand prix was like securing a pole position for Toro Rosso.

The Spaniard will start from the third row alongside team-mate Max Verstappen after a hugely impressive qualifying performance from the two rookies. With Sainz delighting his home crowd on Saturday afternoon, he admits it is a special result for the team.

"You obviously have a lot more interviews and photos to take, press conferences and all that, but to be honest I didn’t realise I was in Spain until the Q3 in lap, when I suddenly came out of my qualifying bubble and I looked around to see all of the crowds cheering," Verstappen said.

"I realised this must be for me! For the first time in the season, I was waving to the crowd and it felt like a pole position. It is the same feeling."

And Sainz says Toro Rosso has not been able to show its true performance on the first four tracks this season.

"We have a very strong aero package and Barcelona is a lot about the aero. The upgrade we brought for T3, it was out of the box and still the car was fully loaded, a lot of downforce and was there.

"Then we had some tracks where there were very long straights that didn’t benefit us a lot, but finally we came to a track that suits our car and we are there. The whole season I have been saying we have a great car, so everything is working really well."

Click here for Saturday's gallery from the Spanish Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.