Daniil Kvyat's car was 'driving on its own' in F1 qualifying

Kvyat had progressed out of Q1 in all four of the season's preceding qualifying sessions, but a lap 2.235s off the pace in the first segment left him last in the order at Barcelona.

He was eight tenths off team-mate Carlos Sainz, who comfortably progressed to Q2 and would go on to qualify 12th.

When asked by Autosport what had gone wrong, Kvyat joked: "Except for everything, nothing.

"The car was very hard to drive, pretty sure it was completely out of the window so we need to understand why it happened.

"I was losing time in the corners where it is hard to imagine [you can] lose time.

"Something is wrong but we will work hard to understand what.

"The car was not driven by me today, it was driving on its own."

Kvyat had struggled to match Sainz's pace through Friday practice, and while he was still slower in FP3, he said his car had improved prior to qualifying.

"The things seemed to be a bit better today in the morning but then in qualifying it went back again to where it was yesterday," he said.

"We need to analyse why it did like that because I never really got to a happy window with the car.

"Since the beginning [of qualifying], it was clear that it was going to be a very tough session.

"The car is not doing what I want and when the car is not doing what I want, I cannot drive it."

SAINZ 'COULDN'T HAVE DONE MORE'

Sainz admitted Toro Rosso had anticipated it would be more competitive at Barcelona - a track that has so far yielded both his career-best grid position and a joint-best race finish in F1.

"We all expected a bit more from this weekend, particularly at a track where we performed really well in the past," Sainz said.

"P5 [on the grid] two years ago, P8 last year - today P12, so obviously we expected a bit more than this."

While he was within the top 10 in all three practice sessions and Q1, the Spaniard told his team that 12th was "the maximum" after he was eliminated in Q2 - and he stood by that statement later on.

"When you do two laps that are exactly the same - [1m]21.3[s], 21.3 - there is little you can do to extract more from it," he said.

"I did exactly two copy/paste laps. I couldn't have done more.

"When you put things into perspective and when you see where my team-mate is, it means there is not much more in the car at the moment."