Leclerc finishes a more than solid Friday by taking fourth in the second free practice – anything is possible for tomorrow’s qualifying.
Charles Leclerc can be reasonably satisfied after the first two free practice sessions of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. On the stunning Jeddah circuit, the Monegasque driver ended the second session in fourth place, showing good potential from the SF-25. On a single flying lap, something was missing—partly due to a small mistake from Leclerc himself—while in terms of race pace, the gap to the two McLarens of Norris and Piastri wasn’t massive, but still significant.
Leclerc himself, interviewed at the end of the evening session, commented on his Friday as follows: “We’re still missing a bit of pace compared to the cars in front, but if we manage to put everything together tomorrow, I think it could be an interesting and closely fought qualifying. We all seem to be quite close, with McLaren looking slightly ahead. We’ll keep focusing on ourselves and see what we can pull out.”
The Monegasque then added: “It was a tricky day because this is a very demanding track, where confidence has to be high to perform at your best. We made quite a few changes to the car, but overall it was a very positive day: I learned a lot, and once we get everything into the right window, we’ll extract even more performance. McLaren looks very strong again—much stronger than us—but I’ll say it again: never say never. If I can put everything together, anything can be possible. Am I confident for tomorrow? I’d say yes. We did a good job exploring different options, and everything is quite clear in my mind about what I want to do tomorrow. So we’ll go in that direction and hope it pays off in qualifying.”
Photo: Scuderia Ferrari Gallery
