Disappointment for the seventh place from Charles Leclerc, who, however, is already focusing on tomorrow’s race.
As Charles Leclerc stated yesterday, he was definitely aiming for pole position, but the Monegasque driver only managed to secure seventh place, almost seven-tenths behind Norris’ McLaren. A significant step back for Ferrari, which capped its performance, with both drivers, in the final session of qualifying.
A result stemming from a higher-downforce setup (in anticipation of a possible wet race tomorrow), but one that doesn’t justify such a clear step back. Leclerc tried to analyze it with these statements: “Since this morning, the performance has not been the same as yesterday. I think I know the reason, but we need to analyze the data. We made the right choice; we knew we had to sacrifice some performance: clearly, it’s not what we want, but it was necessary for this weekend. I won’t go into details. Seventh and eighth position are definitely disappointing, I never would have expected it, not even in the worst-case scenarios. As I said before the weekend, and now it’s important to remember, this is just a starting point.”
The Monegasque then added: “We need to work, the season is long, and it doesn’t make sense to look for miracles tomorrow. The goal will be to collect points and then, step by step, we’ll get back to the front. I’m sure this car has potential, but today we were outside the right window, and it was clearly visible. In the first attempt in Q3, I was satisfied, but not in the last one. The car changed a lot between Q2 and Q3, and I couldn’t get the feeling back. Overall, I can’t be happy: it was a car that was difficult to drive. There are still many unknowns for tomorrow, we’ll see, but as always, I’ll give my best.”
Photo: X Scuderia Ferrari
