Autobayng News Team
Charles Leclerc said he was “very disappointed” to qualify fourth on the grid for his home race after struggling with his car’s brakes.
The Ferrari driver took fourth on the grid, three-tenths of a second slower than pole-winner Andrea Kimi Antonelli. He will share the second row of the grid with team mate Lewis Hamilton, who out-qualified him by seven hundredths of a second.
Leclerc said he was still dealing with similar problems which arose on his car during the last race in Canada. He hopes Ferrari will have a fix in place for next week’s race at the Circuit de Catalunya.
“I’m very disappointed,” he said. “It’s been an incredibly tough weekend.
“It has been an incredibly tough last two weekends with quite a lot of issues on my side. I’m pretty confident we’ll have a solution for next race.
“So far it’s been very, very tricky. The fact that, on braking, I just don’t really know where to brake getting to Q3 after [three practice sessions] makes it very tricky for me.”
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Leclerc abandoned his first run in Q3 after making a mistake at Massenet. He then went quickest with the first lap on his next run, but hit the wall at Tabac on his final lap.
He said that final error wasn’t solely down to his braking problem but “a combination of things.”
“I think today it’s a bit more than only me. Just as a team, and on my side of the garage, it’s been a very messy weekend.
“We’ve had a lot of issues in Q3 as well. Probably nothing that people realised but I had to go out of the [pit] box much earlier, there was a bit of mess in the garage, but then luckily we kind of got back onto the track.
“I knew I had two laps, I tried everything on the second lap, but I didn’t finish the lap and that’s it.”
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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine
