As well as Max Verstappen, it was a Sunday to forget for Carlos Sainz at the Australian Grand Prix.

The Spaniard started P9 after a red flag and an issue firing the car up for his final run hampered his Q3 badly. Sunday proved to be even worse.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Sainz confirmed he had another problem before the start, this time with the steering wheel.

“I did a mistake misjudging the grip for sure,” he said. “What was clearly not right today was we again had issues with the steering wheel. We had to change the steering wheel one minute before leaving for the formation lap and the steering wheel was not well positioned on some switches which meant at the start I was getting some anti-stall."

Ferrari and Sainz went for the alternate strategy and started on the hards.

The 27-year-old dropped five places at the start because of the anti-stall problem.

It became an even bigger nightmare on lap two. As he attempted to overtake Mick Schumacher before turn 9, he went in too hot, couldn’t control the car on the grass, went across the track and spun into the gravel on the left hand side at the exit of turn 10.

“So I started with hards and with anti-stall so was on the back foot. Being in a rush to overtake and come back I did a mistake on the hard tyre when the tyre was probably not ready to be pushed and not ready to overtake people, so it’s not great.”

“We have not been perfect this weekend, it’s been a bit of disaster, so we need to learn from it and I was the first one to make a mistake.”

The next race is at Imola and Sainz is hopeful that all the problems they had in Australia will be gone for one of two home races for Ferrari this year.

“It should be better. We just need to make sure we don’t do the kind of mistakes we have been doing this weekend with the problems I had on my side of the garage and stay a bit more patient when we need to be patient. The car is there to win every race.”

Asked if human error is more likely with these cars, the Spaniard agreed with that but was still critical of himself for the error he made in the race.

“The cars are a bit more tricky, the tyres are a bit harder, they’re difficult to manage in the starts and today I paid the price a bit.

“Of course, there is human error, especially at the beginning of the season until we learn these cars, but that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have done the mistake and we shouldn’t have the problems with the steering we had yesterday and today.”