Ferrari’s drivers were disappointed to qualify outside of the front two rows of the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix.
Charles Leclerc said he was in two minds about his performance – pleased that they had rectified the set-up problems they experienced yesterday, but disappointed to be over three-tenths of a second off pole position.
“One side is, we did a really good job from yesterday to today in terms of car set-up,” he told the official F1 channel. “I changed completely the car on my side because yesterday I felt really bad in the car and today the feeling is back.
“However, the other side is that I’m mostly very disappointed with today because the performance is not there and we are too far away from pole, from where we would like to be. So it’s not a great day for the team.
“But tomorrow is the race and we’ll try to maximise our points. And then, as soon as the weekend is finished, try to understand why we were far further away than what we thought off pole.”
Leclerc made a small error on his quickest lap, running slightly wide at turn five with a snap of oversteer. However he does not believe he could have significantly improved his eventual lap time.
“No, there wasn’t much more in the car today, I think,” he said. “We were just struggling with grip and overall pace.”
Carlos Sainz Jnr, who matched Leclerc’s lap time to within a hundredth of a second, admitted the session was “not good” for Ferrari. He said they needed to concern themselves with the larger gap to the front row than the hundredths of a second by which the Mercedes drivers beat them.
“Obviously I’m disappointed,” he said. “We had strong practice sessions and we were expecting to be in the fight for pole position. And immediately in Q2 once Red Bull and McLaren turned it up, we just didn’t have the pace.
“We could sit here and argue about three hundredths, we would have been P3 and we would all be happy, but the reality is that I was expecting to fight for pole this weekend after free practice and to be more than three-tenths off is a lot of lap time.”
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2024 Spanish Grand Prix
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