Sainz to go on the attack but points a 'tough' challenge

McLaren's Carlos Sainz has vowed to deploy "maximum attack" mode in Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix after an ignition issue thwarted his qualifying efforts.

Sainz was confined to his team's garage from the outset in Q1, stranded by an ignition wiring issue on the McLaren's Renault engine that prevented the Spaniard from setting a time.

With a guaranteed start from the back of the grid, with or without an engine swap, McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl pondered specification changes to Sainz's MCL34, a choice that would imply a pitlane launch.

"It’s still open at the moment, we need to figure out what we want to do," Seidl said;

"We also have a first analysis now, which means that the wiring system of the of the ignition failed and that was causing a power loss Carlos felt, and nothing we could fix."

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Sainz admitted that pulling out all the stops in Sunday's race will require a lot of tyre management.

"It's maximum attack I guess," he said. "Obviously, maximum attack doesn't always work with Pirelli tyres.

"So it will be a compromise between managing the tyres and going maximum attack. So it's probably a very difficult thing to do, but somehow you must always find a way."

Beyond Sainz's specific troubles, teammate Lando Norris' own performance in qualifying left the Briton P11 although he'll line up tenth on the grid, courtesy of Charles Leclerc's grid drop.

Interlagos clearly isn't favourable terrain for McLaren's MCL34.

"I guess we've seen some trends this year in some tracks that there are certain types of corners where we are not very strong," Sainz explained;

"And probably this track has many of those type of corners. And that's why your relative performance drops depending on track to track.

"It doesn't mean that we cannot make it to the points. It just means that it's going to be probably a lot tougher, or tougher than Austria, for example, where it was a good one.

"But it doesn't mean that we cannot do it. It just means that we need to do better."

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