Sainz: Ferrari ‘in the fight’ for top honours in US GP

Carlos Sainz is brimming with confidence heading into Sunday’s US Grand Prix after a strong showing in qualifying at The Circuit of the Americas.

The Ferrari driver secured a third-place starting position, building on his impressive performance in Saturday's sprint event.

Sainz's productive day saw him climb three places during the 19-lap short form race to finish second, pipping McLaren’s Lando Norris to the runner-up spot on the last lap.

Following that, he delivered another strong performance in qualifying, concluding the session 0.322s behind Norris.

Reflecting on his qualifying efforts, Sainz was pleased with the progress Ferrari made throughout the weekend, particularly in addressing their recent onlap pace struggles.

“The aim was to do a step in qualifying compared to yesterday,” Sainz said.

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Sainz was on an even better lap toward the end of qualifying before George Russell's late crash brought the session to a premature halt.

"Bit gutted for that last lap because I was three-tenths up on my lap going into Turn 16 with only two corners left, but it’s easy to say now," he remarked.

“I think we’ve done some good progress and we should be in the fight tomorrow if we get a clean start, and with the two guys in front it should be a fun one.”

Ferrari's relative pace throughout the weekend has been promising, but the team will need once gain to manage tyre degradation—an issue that surfaced in the Sprint—if they are to maintain their form over the longer Grand Prix distance.

Changeable track temperatures could further complicate matters, but Sainz believes Ferrari has made strides in optimizing tyre preparation.

“I always kept an eye on [tyre preparation] because it’s something where we’ve struggled recently in our team to put the tyres in the right window for qualifying. We seem to be always quick in the race, but in qualifying we have some ups and downs,” he acknowledged.

“It was my main point to focus during the whole quali, and it seems like we got it right, especially that last lap before the yellow flag. It seemed like we got them in the right spot because we suddenly found a lot of lap time going into the first two sectors.”

While slightly outpaced by his teammate in Austin, Leclerc also enjoyed a strong Saturday, qualifying fourth and further confirming Ferrari as a force to be reckoned with at COTA.

The Monegasque acknowledged that the session-ending incident involving Russell may have limited his ability to improve his lap time, but he didn’t feel it would have changed the team’s overall prospects.

“I think it would have been either P3 or P4 so it doesn’t change much because it would have been with Carlos, so for the team it’s exactly the same,” Leclerc said.

Looking ahead to the race, he expressed confidence in Ferrari’s race pace, even though they faced challenges earlier in the weekend.

“I think we have a really good car for the race,” he said. “We knew that for qualifying we would struggle a bit more because we didn’t have any fix [for earlier issues], but we’ll see tomorrow.”

With both Sainz and Leclerc starting from strong positions and Ferrari showing solid pace in both race and qualifying conditions, the Italian team is lined up to be a serious contenders in the US Grand Prix.

For Sainz, the focus will be on maintaining the momentum from Saturday and capitalizing on any opportunities in what promises to be an exciting race.

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