McLaren, Ferrari, Verstappen in danger: F1's best of the rest bangs on the door!

19:52, 05 Sep

byNorberto Mujica

Carlos Sainz has been the surprise on Friday at Monza. The Spaniard driver managed to place his Williams FW47 in the top three across both FP sessions, and now he aims to further finetune his car ahead of the rest of the weekend.

Williams' FW47 is slippery. How much so? Carlos Sainz proved that on Friday at Monza.

In both FP sessions, the Spaniard took P3 behind Leclerc in P2. Although the gaps were dramatically different.

In the morning session, Sainz found himself nearly 6 tenths off. But in the afternoon, his Williams was quick enough to be 0.096s off Lando Norris, the eventual leader of the session's time.

Despite P3, Sainz sees areas of improvement for Williams

Reacting to his Friday overall at Monza, Sainz was delighted with his team's performance.

"Today has been a positive day and we seem to have good pace," he began, before indicating there was still room for improvement for the Grove-based team.

"There are still a few areas which I’d like to finetune, so I can feel a bit more comfortable throughout a few of the corners."

Sainz, no stranger to achieving pole in Monza, with the Spaniard putting in the fastest Saturday afternoon time in Ferrari colours back in the 2023 season.

"It’s good to have decent pace across both long and short runs. We’ll do some work on the setup tonight and hopefully we can carry this good form the rest of the weekend," he concluded.

Pole position, plus his awfully efficient FW47 in low downforce configuration could very well provide Williams their first win since 2012 when Pastor Maldonado pipped Fernando Alonso in Barcelona.