Leclerc: I will try to stay ahead of Max before Turn 1

Charles Leclerc will start from the front row in Saturday’s sprint: in qualifying prior to the short race he only lost to Max Verstappen, and after that only by a few hundredths.

Charles Leclerc: “The car remained exactly the same as yesterday, but the conditions changed and we had to adapt to them very quickly, but at least qualifying went well.

Of course I’m disappointed that I couldn’t win pole position for the second day in a row, but second position on this track is also good. I will do my best to stay ahead of Max before the first corner. I remember that the asphalt on the starting field in the area around the second position provided good grip in previous years. I hope nothing has changed in this regard.

Although I don’t actually know this yet, because tomorrow I will start from pole, but I hope we can stay ahead of Max today.”

Carlos Sainz, Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate, showed sixth result before complaining that he was not entirely happy with the car’s behavior this weekend: “We definitely need to work on our qualifying pace because we were constantly losing a few tenths on the leaders, especially on soft tires.

In the first sector of the lap I did not feel the necessary comfort, and in the last sector the tires were already overheating. In addition, our car is subject to vertical fluctuations. But otherwise there were a number of sessions this weekend where we did well, so we can hope that we can make progress as the race progresses.

If you have complete confidence in the car, it is of course more fun to drive than if you are not so comfortable. Now we have not been able to get the desired feeling from the car, but at the same time the applicable rules during the sprint weekends no longer allow us to work with it and there is little we can do to change it.

In general it is so, but let’s hope that the picture will change during the race and that we will be able to improve.”