Charles Leclerc: I don’t know what happened to the car

The qualifying for the sprint in Spielberg was not successful for Charles Leclerc – in the final he got technical problems with his car in the pit lane. The Ferrari driver was able to enter the track and even make an attempt, but the problems persisted and he returned to the pits without completing the lap.

Charles will start tenth in Saturday’s sprint, with his teammate Carlos Sainz setting the fifth fastest time.

Charles Leclerc (10th): “I don’t know exactly what happened to the car. I was driving in the pit lane when the system that prevented the engine from stalling worked, and then everything was switched off. The team said we will discuss this when I come back to the pits, but we haven’t had time to talk yet.

Today we were not too strong, but the result could certainly be better than tenth place. I’m a little disappointed, but we’ll see how tomorrow’s sprint goes. I will try to do well and return to the top positions.”

Carlos Sainz (5th): “I think I qualified well for the sprint and showed good pace in all three sessions. I did all three fast laps without making any mistakes, but unfortunately even during practice it seemed to us that we looked a little worse on Soft tires than on Medium and Hard tires.

But it was the soft tyres that had to be used in the last session and we believed that we could still get into the top three. But I only showed the fifth result. During the training on soft tyres we were on about the same level, I showed the 4th time.

All this still needs to be analyzed, but unfortunately this is the level we are at now. We will see how tomorrow’s sprint goes, although I hope I can at least make a little progress.

After all, I’m starting from 5th position, this is the cleaner side of the track, so I plan to do everything I can to earn more points. And for the main qualifying we need to try to improve the car settings a bit.”