Carlos Sainz admits that his “strange accident” in Q3 in Singpaore was caused by his tyres being colder than anticipated.
The Spaniard spun off after as he started his first lap, stranding himself in 10th on the grid after failing to log a time.
He’d had to move over on his out lap to let others past – notably Oscar Piastri, just seconds before the crash – and that contributed to his tyres being cold.
However later in the session after the restart Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc ran wide at Turn 2 after also finding his tyres colder than anticipated.
“A bit of a strange accident there,” said Sainz. “Had to let a lot of cars through there, opening my lap, and my tyres were just a lot colder than I thought they would be. I misjudged the grip going on the bump on Turn 17, and it completely snapped on me.
“Driver mistake. I underestimated the grip I would get. Launching the lap, I was already under pressure with another car coming.
“And I knew that launching the lap, I was already going to be slower because of them approaching the last corner so slow, so it meant that I tried to do something that was not enough grip to do.”
Sainz admitted that it’s been difficult to fully understand the tyres in Singapore.
“It’s been a big struggle for me this weekend,” he said. “Very strange how it can change from one year to another, but like we’ve seen many times this year, to get the tyres in the right window, over one lap with our car, it’s quite tricky.
“I had a couple of decent laps over the weekend, but in general, very inconsistent. I had issues with the brakes yesterday, which didn’t help my build-up to the weekend.
“Here it’s all about gaining confidence, executing from FP1 to Q3 perfect laps, and I didn’t have that this weekend. I was just struggling.
“Yesterday, I didn’t get into a rhythm, and today, to get the tyres and the brakes into a window was just a very tricky thing to do.”
Sainz remains hopeful that he can have a strong race from 10th on Sunday, assuming that he doesn’t have any further setbacks such as a gearbox penalty.
“The car looks quite damaged, and I don’t know what we will do,” he said. “I just hope that I can have a normal race tomorrow, get into a rhythm like I got in the rhythm in Baku, and then we can show good pace.
“And I think this year, once I get into a rhythm in the race, we should be okay. It’s just over one lap with the black magic of the tyres to get everything working – I mean, you saw the mistake I did is not common, and not typical.
“And it shows that there must be something, honestly, a very, very fine line between getting them to grip and not to grip. And this weekend has been that way. So tomorrow, as soon as I get into a rhythm, we will be there.”
Sainz added: “Let’s get into the rhythm first, and then see how’s the pace, see what the strategy allows us to do, and hopefully we can move forward. Extra DRS, I’m still optimistic.
“But I need a good night’s sleep to feel optimistic also, because today was a big blow for me, and I didn’t enjoy it at all.”
Sainz admitted he was surprised by a “weird” transition for McLaren from Friday to Saturday.
“I don’t like considering Friday too much, because you don’t know what the others are doing, and I never tried to take too many conclusions from that,” he said.
“You can already see in FP3, Lando went a second quicker than FP2, that shows that there was something that they were sandbagging with. And even in Q3 they did only went one-tenth quicker than FP3, which is quite weird.
“So there’s something strange going on, probably with the tyre preparation and how much you can extract this weekend with the tyres, because it’s not normal that is only one-tenth between FP3 fastest lap and Q3 lap.”
