Charles Leclerc was frustrated to fall to sixth on the grid in qualifying for the sprint race after suffering a drop in power on the long straight approaching the hairpin.
The Ferrari driver was so taken aback he remarked on the loss of power during his lap, telling race engineer Bryan Bozzi: “This deployment, my god.”
“What the hell is happening?” Leclerc repeated after finishing his lap. “I lost like four tenths on the back straight.” Bozzi replied: “We’ll come back to you.”
Leclerc had been inside the top three places during the first two rounds of qualifying. He will start from sixth on the grid after qualifying over three tenths of a second slower than team mate Lewis Hamilton.
Leclerc said it had been “a very frustrating session.”
“Unfortunately, when I had a good lap, I lost half a second in the back straight for whatever reason, on the second lap in SQ3,” he said. “So we’ll analyse that and try to understand what has gone.”
However Leclerc, who took the lead from fourth on the grid in Melbourne last weekend, is hopeful Ferrari will be more competitive in race trim.
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“I think in the race we should be relatively stronger than where we were now in qualifying,” he said. “However, Mercedes seems to be still a step ahead in qualifying for some reason.
“The Mercedes power unit finds a lot of lap time, we don’t quite find that amount of lap time just yet in qualifying, but in the race we are closer, so I’m hopeful we can come back tomorrow.”
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said they were not entirely sure why Leclerc’s power deployment did not behave as it had done on his previous lap.
“We need to have a look at the data to understand exactly what’s happened, but for sure he didn’t have the same deployment as the lap before,” Vasseur told Sky. “He lost something like three tenths in the last straight line.”
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2026 Chinese Grand Prix
- “What the hell is happening?” Frustrated Leclerc lost “half a second” on straight
- Antonelli keeps front row start, Gasly stays seventh as stewards clear pair of impeding
- Mercedes made early start to new power unit project ‘like last time’ – Hamilton
- “The whole day has been a disaster” says Verstappen after qualifying eighth
- Russell heads sprint race qualifying but second-placed Antonelli faces investigation
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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