Carlos Sainz Jr. will start the Saudi Arabian Gp from the third place after battling with his teammate Charles Leclerc and the surprising flying lap from Checo Perez.

The Spaniard had initially gone fastest on the first timed laps in Q3 on a used set of boots, but lost out on taking his maiden pole position in the end. 

The Spanish driver explained his lap in the post-quali interviews.

“The lap for p3 was pretty good. It was a used tire because for some reason the used tyre is giving me a better feeling this weekend. The new tyre for me is very tricky to handle and when I went on new for the last one of Q3 I just didn´t have any rear grip and I struggled. For a used tyre wasn´t that bad. I checked Charles beat me by a little so it´s still ok.”

He later added, “that (feeling better with used tyres) probably cost me fighting for pole position.”

Sainz Jr is looking forward to understand why he couldn´t find the best time with the new tires and suspects that it was the possible reason why he couldn´t challenge Checo´s pole.

On the upcoming race tomorrow, he said “It´s going to be exciting all four cars mixed up between the Ferraris and the Red Bulls. So, I think we will play around with each other with strategy and overtaking. It should be an interesting race.”

🇸🇦 Good Quali. Interestingly I was faster on used Softs, so maybe I should have also done my second push on Q3 on them. The feeling with the car is better this weekend. We'll try to bring today's pace to the race. Let's go.

👉https://t.co/KRh4nayavC

_#Carlossainz pic.twitter.com/MgsvdlO5c2

— Carlos Sainz (@Carlossainz55) March 26, 2022