Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc heads into Saturday’s running at Abu Dhabi as the fastest man. He logged a 1:24.809 in a stop-start second practice at Yas Marina, 0.043s quicker than Lando Norris.
Crashes for Carlos Sainz and Nico Hülkenberg saw the session running get dramatically reduced, limiting laps on both low and high fuel.
Leclerc was nonetheless pleased with how the SF-23 was performing.
Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
“Yeah, because I only did one lap on the medium [tyre] then straightaway a lap on the soft and it was feeling pretty good. It’s a good sign when it starts like this, so [I] hope we can have a great weekend from now on.”
Mercedes comfortably topped FP1. George Russell was 0.6s quicker than both Carlos Sainz and Robert Shwartzman in P6 and P7 respectively.
The Monegasque is wary of the speed they showed in the first session as four points cover the teams heading into Sunday’s race — Mercedes on 392 versus 388 for the Scuderia.
“It’s true that also Mercedes looked very strong. I don’t know what happened exactly in FP2 – they looked a little bit less strong compared to FP1, so we’ve still got a lot of work to do because we will be fighting with them this weekend.”
Due to the chaotic nature of second practice, very little was learned by the teams. Leclerc hopes Ferrari can take advantage of this like they have on sprint weekends.
“It’s going to be a tricky weekend. I think we are going to go into the race with as much information as we do on a Sprint weekend maybe, where we have very little info, so it’s going to be very interesting and we’ll try to maximise the little information we have, and normally it’s one of our strong points, so I hope we can take advantage of that and beat Mercedes.”
When it was put to him this could be a circuit that suits Ferrari, he downplayed that suggestion and will wait for Saturday to see. Amazingly, Ferrari have never been on pole at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
“I will wait before saying that it’s a strong circuit for us. We still have to prove it tomorrow in qualifying, and then tyre management will be the biggest thing this weekend. We know that we have to be prepared for that on Sunday, so we’ll do our best.”
Heading into the final race of 2023 on Sunday, Leclerc trails teammate Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso by 12 points as a four-way battle will take place for P4 in the Drivers’ Championship.
It’s something Leclerc doesn’t care about in the slightest, instead having his full attention on trying to get second in the Constructors’ for his team.
“The fourth place in the drivers’ [means] absolutely nothing, the second place in the Constructors’ though is nice. Honestly I would really like the team to be second at the end of this weekend. We’ve had a tough season and everybody deserves it.
“They’ve worked like crazy in order to bring the upgrades earlier, and it would be deserved to be in second at the end of the year, so we’ll do absolutely everything for that.
“And then in the drivers’, honestly I don’t have too much hope of finishing fourth. If this happens then good, if not I don’t really mind. I just want to win that championship as soon as possible.”
