“Why not pass him into Turn 2? – Carlos Sainz eager to get past pole winner Lando Norris tomorrow at Sochi

Why not pass him into Turn 2? – Carlos Sainz cannot wait for the “fun” race start with Lando Norris tomorrow, as the former McLaren colleagues start the Russian Grand Prix on the front row.

Both Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz had never been on a Formula 1 pole position before Sochi. It was then a case of who will break his duck today at qualifying, as Lewis Hamilton broke his front wing on the way to the pit lane, and gave ‘CarLando’ a lucrative opportunity.

Norris in his McLaren came up as the winner, with Ferrari boy Sainz missing out on the pole by not too much. The former McLaren teammates and buddies will start on the front grid tomorrow, something Sainz is very excited about and has also revealed his intentions of trying to get past Norris at the start of the race.

“It’s going to be fun. Hopefully, I can get Lando at the start or, if not, just get a good tow because starting P2 here, dirty side, is really penalising.

“I’ll need to make sure I do my homework overnight to make sure we don’t lose too much off the line on that dirty side and then see if I can get into a tow, or why not pass him into Turn 2?

“It was very tricky, to be honest. It was right from the beginning a very tricky qualifying, but right after Q2 I could see there was a chance the slicks would come into play.

“We did a very good strategy, pitting [with] two laps to the end, getting the slicks up to temperature and then pulled out a pretty strong lap. Unfortunately, I was one of the first ones to cross the line, which didn’t allow me to exploit the whole track conditions, but it was still a good lap on the limit.”

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