Carlos Sainz’s Williams momentum came to an abrupt halt in Monaco Grand Prix qualifying, as the man who’d started sixth for three grands prix in a row didn’t even make it past Q2.
That his team-mate Alex Albon starts just one place ahead of him in 10th was fairly irrelevant to Sainz, who felt he’d compromised himself with needless set-up tinkering in over-reaction to finding the Williams harder to fathom around the Monte Carlo streets.
The Ferrari convert had started the season in Albon’s shadow, finding the adjustment in car characteristics at his new team harder to quickly conquer than he’d expected.
But eighth on the Bahrain grid in mid-April started a clear turnaround - one that Monaco interrupted. And not just because of the disappointing qualifying result, if anything Sainz was more frustrated by his general lack of affinity with the car throughout the weekend.
“Honestly my weekend has just been a bit off from the get-go,” he conceded. “Never getting to feel well and confident with the car around the street track.
“A bit disappointed because after all the progress that I’ve done with set-up and my driving, I feel like the moment I went to a street track I went back seven places.
"Learning too many new things about this car on a street track and we had to play a lot with set-up, which in Monaco is not ideal because you will feel a different car every time you go out.
"Never getting into a very good rhythm this weekend.”
The medium tyre gamble
Williams was among the teams that gave the medium C5 tyre another go in Q2 amid this weekend’s ongoing tyre choice dilemma, before switching back to soft C6s for his final run.
He admitted that probably wasn’t the ideal move on a weekend when he was lacking confidence in the car and its set-ups.
“The moment we started playing with mediums and softs, that’s when your lack of experience or lack of feeling with the car starts to show up,” said Sainz.
But while Sainz thinks Williams should avoid doing that in the future, he didn’t blame that tactic for his poor result.
“It’s a good point that maybe in Q2, given it’s our most important session, whatever the tyre is you just stick with it just to make sure you nail the lap,” he said.
“Because I don’t think there’s much [between them]. If there is something, it’s a tenth between compounds. I feel like in Williams’s year, we have that tenth of margin to go to Q3, and today I didn’t.
“What I’m more concerned about - or more disappointed in - this weekend, is with my understanding and my confidence.
"Set-up changes with the car have been way too much and I’ve never really felt the car underneath me, which gives us some homework before the next street track, wherever that is.”
But did Williams have bigger problems?
Regardless of his discomfort with the set-up and the potential time lost to tyre swapping, Sainz also felt Williams got lost during qualifying - something Albon’s failure to do better than 10th in Q3 back up.
“Even with all this lack of rhythm, lack of pace, lack of confidence with the car, I felt like I had plenty of pace to go into Q3 this weekend,” he said.
“In Q1 we had a solid run. In Q2, I lost my rhythm, I lost my confidence and I had a terrible last lap. Sliding all over the place.
“Definitely something to look into because looking at Alex, he is in Q3. He may have done a mega lap in Q2, but in Q3 he was nowhere again.
"So there must be some black magic there that maybe we haven’t understood with the tyres.”
Albon was similarly puzzled.
“I think my Q2 lap was half a second quicker than my Q3 lap, so that’s never good news. And we need to understand why,” he said.
“We’ve been in a really good rhythm from FP1 to FP3. And then in qualifying, from Q1 it was a little bit like ‘oh no, what’s going on here?’ It was like the tyres aren’t working properly.
“Q2 run one was the same. In Q2 run two it suddenly finally got there and I thought ‘OK, we’ve finally got it to work, we’ve found a solution’. And then in Q3 we went back to Q1 again and lost grip. That was it.
“Every lap into Turn 1 [Sainte Devote], I had a snap, apart from on my best lap in Q2. And with these tyres, they’re so sensitive. When the surface temps start building, they just go out of control and you spiral in a bad way.
“Not my finest job either. We just need to understand why we were in the window, [then] out of the window, in qualifying.”
An attacking race
Drivers down the field may be tempted to try leftfield strategies such as clearing both their mandatory pitstops very early under this weekend’s new Monaco format.
But Sainz was much more gung-ho about his race chances on sheer performance.
“In the race I’ll be quick. Yesterday in the long run I was quick,” he declared.
“So I hope I’m putting pressure on everyone in front of me and we can use this to do something with the strategy.
“I feel like the car with higher fuel, a bit less reactive, when everything comes down and I am more confident, I’m pretty sure tomorrow I’ll be on the pace and putting pressure on everyone around me.
“I haven’t had a look at strategy yet because I’ve been too busy changing set-ups.
“But tomorrow’s a day to look forward. Tomorrow the target needs to be to get in the points and be the ones on the attack, because I am out of position from where I think I can be this weekend.”
Albon wasn’t quite so sure about Williams’s longer-run prospects.
“We had a lot of graining and we’ll need to manage quite a lot,” he said.
“I think we’ve got to be careful not to open up the tyre. Even though it’s a two-stop, it’s still going to be a managed race to some extent.”
