Leclerc has clearly been ahead of Sainz in Austin, having taken pole for Sunday’s main race and qualified second in the Saturday shootout, while Sainz was fourth and sixth in the two sessions.
Sainz says that the sprint weekend meant that he couldn’t optimise the car over the bumps, which are more severe this year, in FP1.
"For me it's mainly track characteristics,” said the Spaniard when asked about Leclerc’s advantage.
“The car here is bouncing around a lot and jumping around a lot and when that's the case normally Charles copes with it a bit better than I do.
“And this time I didn't have time to change the setup to improve it, to put it a bit more to my liking, and go into the race weekend a bit more comfortable with the car to extract more and more performance.
“In sprint weekends that's the problem, that you're stuck with the baseline set up more or less that you can run and the amount of bumps again this year surprised us being even bumpier than last year. I'm just not coping very well with it in the high speed. Not a lot of confidence.
“I feel like the car is going to snap on me at any point in time, and I'm having to drive one step under the limit, which is never ideal in quali."
Source: Autosport