Carlos Sainz thinks he will be a sitting duck if it doesn't rain

Carlos Sainz thinks he will be a sitting duck if the rain doesn’t arrive during the Austrian GP due to his high downforce set-up.

The Toro Rosso driver made a late switch from his dry set-up when the heavens opened during final practice. Before then the Italian squad had experimented with vastly different downforce levels on their two cars.

Sainz’s task will be made even harder as he starts from 12th on the grid after missing out on a clean lap in Q3.

“First of all we had to move to high downforce because of the rain and after free practice I hadn’t gone quick enough running with the low downforce and then when I went into qualifying it was the first time I had been running the high downforce configuration,” Sainz said.

“We decided to split the cars between P1, P2 and P3 and after P3 with the rain I decided to go high. Unfortunately it dried up and it was my first laps with high downforce on a dry track so I had no experience. I really think a good result in Q3 was possible, but I found the two Red Bulls in sectors one and two and I couldn’t go forward and improve.

“It will be very tough, that is why I am so disappointed. We went for the qualifying configuration to be strong in qualifying and at the end we didn’t get the advantage of being strong in qualy. It means that tomorrow we will be down 14kph without DRS which means when the others open the DRS it becomes 25-30kph. So we will be a sitting duck in the DRS zones. To go forward will be very tough.”

The sister car of Max Verstappen starts from seventh and he too has the high-downforce set-up. However, the Dutchman isn’t expecting a repeat of the Spanish GP when the both cars were easy pickings along the pit-straight.

"I think we made some mistakes in Barcelona," he said. "I think we were too conservative on the tyres so we can push more on that. I think afterwards we definitely improved our race pace, so even in Canada we were quite fast, but we just couldn’t get past. Now we are in a better position to start the race.

“Of course it [rain] would be the best scenario, but I don’t think it will rain so we will have to do it in the dry conditions. I think even in the dry we can score points.”

Verstappen was impressive in the wet of Practice Three, breezing past more experienced drivers, something he puts down to his recent karting experience.

“This track is very slippery so you have to approach it like a kart,” he added. “I have driven here in a Formula Renault 3.5 for half a day in the wet.”

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