Carlos Sainz Jr has admitted that he was surprised to reach the final stage of qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The Spanish rookie will start from ninth on the grid for Sunday's race in Sakhir, six places ahead of Toro Rosso teammate Max Verstappen.
However, Sainz Jr says he was unsure whether he would even make it past Q1 in Bahrain.
He told reporters: "It is probably our least expected Q3 of the year. Up until now our race pace was always a bit better than our qualifying pace, but here everything is up and down and weird things are happening from one session to another!
"Our long runs were positive considering we turned the engine down, but I have a set of options I can play with and hopefully we can use it to go forward.
"We need to make sure we have a clean first three laps, that we get the straight line speed guys out of the DRS zone because we know the lack of power we have."
Sainz Jr has finished in the points in two of the first three races this season.
Chris O'Keefe
