Carlos Sainz had been expecting to be challenging for pole position as qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix reached its climax at Albert Park in Melbourne on Saturday afternoon.
Instead, his crucial first run in the final round was thwarted when he was inches away from the line when a red flag came out for Fernando Alonso's accident.
And while he had enough time left to put in another flying lap once the session resumed, technical issues and cold tyres meant that it didn't go to plan, leaving him consigned to ninth on the grid for the start of tomorrow's race.
"Incredibly unlucky," Sainz told the media after the end of qualifying. "Everything that could have gone wrong in Q3 went wrong.
“The lap at the end, we had a problem with the starter," he revealed. "We couldn’t start the car.
"We had to go out three minutes later to when we were planning to go out. I couldn’t prepare the tyre, I couldn’t warm up the tyre.
“Everything was rushed, and I had to do the lap on freezing tyres, and it was a horrible lap for us."
Sainz told Sky Sports f1 that he had nearly crashed on two separate occasions during his final run, and even then had ended up more than one and a half seconds off the pace of his team mate Charles Leclerc's pole time.
Sainz said it was particularly disappointing, "especially because I was in the fight for pole position the whole quali.”
Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto subsequently offered consoling words of encouragement and support, but Sainz was still fuming about what had happened.
“He knows I am angry because we shouldn’t have these problems with the starter, and it was just a disaster," Sainz responded. "He knows today I was in the fight for pole.
"Everything that could have gone wrong for me went wrong, so I'm not going to be happy at all, even if anyone tells me to be happy.
“I need to sleep. Until I go to sleep, I will be angry," he said. “You can imagine the anger I have inside me right now, I don’t need to describe it to you ... A good night sleep and that’s it."
"But tomorrow is another day, and we will try and come back," he continued, already looking at how well he would be able to recover on Sunday when the lights go out to get the race underway.
“I think we are going to try and recover as much as possible, but we are also honest with ourselves," he said.
"I qualified ninth - I should have been at least first row and a good fight for the win tomorrow.
“We’ll stay aggressive," he added. “But at the same time the midfield is tighter this weekend, the midfield is closer to everyone else. We don’t have the advantage we had in Bahrain or other places.
"Without the fourth DRS zone, the circuit hasn’t changed that much. and it will be tricky to overtake," he said. "Overtaking now will go back to being extremely difficult and it is the worst possible scenario for me.
"But I will give it our best shot," he pledged "Tomorrow is a day to try and go forward."
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