McLaren made a breakthrough with their car at the Singapore Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz Jnr revealed following the team’s best qualifying performance of the year in Austin.

The team lapped within 0.9% of the fastest car in qualifying at the United States Grand Prix, their best performance so far this year. Sainz indicated how they had made their gains.

“In my personal opinion, in qualifying pace, it looks like since Singapore we’ve managed to find something on the car that switches on the car in qualifying pace,” he said. “And we have, these last few qualifyings, had a good, decent advantage over them.”

However the team is not yet able to replicate its Saturday pace on Sundays, Sainz admitted. “Unfortunately in race pace that is not the case, as we saw in Mexico or as we saw in other races.”

Changes in the wind direction during the last weekend further complicated the picture, Sainz added. “As soon as we put the car on track with different conditions [on Saturday], the car was responding a lot better to our inputs.

“We didn’t do any major set-up changes so we we know it’s something related to track conditions. So it immediately felt a much better car.”

McLaren have increasingly been able to challenge the leading three teams in the early stages of races, but aren’t usually able to keep them behind. “I am super happy to overtake them and give them a bit of a run,” said Sainz, “but then I’m obviously also frustrated to not be able to hold on to them for very long.

“In qualifying we were eight tenths, one second [off]. In race pace that translates into a bit worse tyre management, a bit worse feeling with the car and that gap probably increases.

“So it just shows that we need to keep working in this direction and keep making the car stronger mainly for race pace, because that’s what’s going to allow us to hold onto them.”

Analysis: McLaren’s qualifying performance in 2019

Over the 14 races prior to Singapore McLaren were 1.7% slower than the fastest car. That has fallen to 1.48% over the last five races.

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2019 F1 season