The fall of the flag for 2024 Formula One Spanish GP qualifying saw Charles Leclerc end up in P5 for Sunday’s race, narrowly behind the Mercedes drivers, and fractions ahead of Carlos Sainz.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver was candid with regard to his struggles in the weekend so far.
The 26-year-old was in bother on Friday as he was comfortably off the pace of the main runners, including his teammate. He also ran the older package yesterday for Ferrari to get back-to-back running and data.
“I’ve had a very difficult time until quali really, until FP3 I would say. FP1 and FP2 was extremely difficult for me. FP1 we had the old package, we had to obviously do the compare between the two cars which was needed.
“But on a track like Barcelona, when you lose two sets of tyres it’s difficult because you only have one lap per set and then you lose 6 or 7 tenths on the second time lap. So just being a bit late to get into the rhythm.
“In FP2, FP2 the car felt really out of place, and the balance I was really struggling [with].”
The 6-time winner admitted that drastic changes were made to the car overnight to help with his feeling and confidence.
Leclerc was adamant in his belief that these changes will help them in the race tomorrow, but he admitted they did not have the raw pace to challenge Norris or Verstappen.
“Today we changed, basically, not everything but a lot of things in the car. In FP3, I felt straight away much more at ease. However, the pace is just not there.
“I’m happy in a way of the progress with the feeling that I’ve had from yesterday to today which I think will pay off in the race. I’m not happy and I’m disappointed with the pace of the car today in qualifying because we are further away than what we had anticipated.”
Scuderia Ferrari had brought a major upgrade package to Barcelona. Leclerc was questioned on the performance of the package, believing it has helped them.
Although it was an improvement compared to Canada where both drivers got dumped out in Q2, locking out the third row was rather underwhelming.
“No, it’s sure that the upgrade that we brought is doing what it’s supposed to do and it’s a good step forward,” Leclerc responded.
“However it’s always a relative sport and other teams have also brought upgrades so then it all depends how much of a step forward everybody is doing. For sure there’s more optimisation with this new package that we can do but I wouldn’t take that as an excuse.
“I think we are just lacking a little bit of pace this weekend.”
Leclerc further went onto explain the purpose behind the upgrade package.
“This upgrade was a performance upgrade and not a drivability upgrade. So what we’ve seen is bringing performance to the car for sure 100%, and we are seeing the numbers that we expected. So it’s bringing more performance to the car and not drivability.”
The Monégasque driver felt they could access the updates in full. Ultimately they fell short of challenging for pole, however.
“Well, it felt like I could access it but when you look at the three tenths off we’ve got to look into it because there’s for sure something that today we missed.”
The incident between Norris and Leclerc towards the end of FP3 drew a lot of eyes. It was investigated, and Leclerc received a reprimand as a result.
When asked about his version of the incident, he explained that he, essentially, was trapped with Norris on one side, and the cars behind coming through on flying laps.
The McLaren driver had impeded Leclerc earlier in the lap, before they touched on the run towards turn 7 as the Ferrari driver showed his frustration.
“The version is very simple. Lando exited the pit lane and I was behind on the push lap.
“Then when he aborted I also aborted, I braked to be alongside him and I misjudged.
“So I was on the right, I didn’t want to impede either of the cars behind and so I was a bit in the middle by being frustrated and looking in the mirrors to try and not impede and we collided. But it was more misunderstanding more than anything.”
There was a bit of speculation that this move from Leclerc might have been an act of frustration, but the Scuderia Ferrari driver quickly explained that it was not anything deliberate or malicious.
He also pointed out that damaging your own car right before qualifying is something nobody wants to do.
“No, no, no, I mean you’re always frustrated when you do that. But you never want to touch because obviously in FP3 that’s the least thing you want to do to damage the car, well my car first of all because I’ve got qualifying right after, so it’s never the goal.”
