Carlos Sainz says that he lacks confidence around the bumpy COTA circuit – and that has given his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc an advantage over the Formula 1 US GP weekend.
Leclerc has clearly been ahead of Sainz in Austin, having taken pole for Sunday’s main race and qualified second in the Saturday shootout, while Sainz was fourth and sixth in the two sessions. Sainz says that the sprint weekend meant that he couldn’t optimise the car over the bumps, which are more severe this year, in FP1. 'For me it's mainly track characteristics,” said the Spaniard when asked about Leclerc’s advantage.
'If we go for soft it means that our tyre model suggests that it's not a bad tyre to go on. If not, we simply wouldn't even consider it. It suggested that it could be a decent tyre for this race, as previous years the soft has been a decent tyre here. “This time around clearly we need to analyse if we can do something, because was it worth the risk? And maybe it wasn't. But we need to analyse how we can maybe do a bit better there.
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