Sainz ‘lacking a bit of confidence’ at Silverstone

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Carlos Sainz has admitted that is not quite at one with his Renault, and that he is lacking in confidence in high-speed corners.

The Silverstone circuit plays into the hands of cars who can manoeuvre round the high-speed sections with ease.

However, the Spaniard says he has not quite got that feeling with his Renault.

“We’ve been struggling at the last couple of tracks. Especially at Paul Ricard and Austria with the high-speed corners, we are simply not quick enough. Silverstone is the king of high-speed corners. That’s probably why our cars are top not in Q3,” Sainz admitted.

“From my side, I’m simply lacking a bit of confidence in high-speed [corners]. We did a couple of set-up changes before qualifying that didn’t really help. That, together with our traffic in my Q1 run in sector one, all these factors add up in such a tight midfield, and we didn’t make it through.”

The Renault man, on loan from Red Bull, has said that both he and the team have been disappointed with their performance all weekend.

“Yeah obviously not happy about the weekend in general. Not only qualifying but the weekend in general,” he added.

“We simply haven’t been very fast this weekend. We’ve rarely been in the top 10 in any of our runs. We as a team know it hasn’t been a very strong weekend and we need to analyse why.”

Having failed to get into the final part of qualifying, Sainz lost his record of making it through into Q3 at every race in 2018. Only four other men still have that record in tact.

“On the other hand, the Q3 record had to come to an end sooner rather than later. I’m obviously a bit disappointed by that but it’s something that would come,” Sainz added about the record.

The Renault man believes that they have dropped down the midfield runners because of their rival’s engine upgrades.

Force India, Haas and Sauber are all customers of either Mercedes and Ferrari, with both bringing significant upgrades to their engines over the course of the triple header.

“Yeah I don’t know if Mercedes or Ferrari have made big steps lately. Haas and Sauber are surprisingly quick,.” Sainz said.

.”Especially in the run from Turn 8 to Turn 11 – it’s so flat out now with Copse not even being a corner any more in these 2018 cars. We tend to lose quite a lot of lap time there. So yes, some of it down to the power unit side.”

Despite the slight power deficiency, Sainz believes that his Renault team will come to the fore at other circuits later in the year.

“Yes it is a concern. I think the team can still be calm. There are a lot of races and circuits that will come to us a bit more. And ones that will be stronger than here,” he added.

Carlos Sainz Renault

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