“I completely understand the choice once the team explained”– Charles Leclerc makes a u-turn over his post-qualifying outburst on the radio.
Ferrari had a humiliating qualifying in the Belgian Grand Prix, where both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were a subject of Q2 elimination, while their rivals had a productive outing.
After his elimination, Leclerc was frustrated on the radio and criticized his team for not pushing enough, “For me guys, we fucked up – but let’s talk about it later,” Leclerc rued.
“I don’t understand why we stopped,” he continued. “We had nothing to lose, we were in a good place and everyone stayed out. I didn’t want to stop that early.”
However, after the qualifying, the Monegasque appeared to change his tone and said that he understood his team’s perspective after he was explained about the choices Ferrari made.
“I think in qualifying, we weren’t that bad,” Leclerc explained. “I think we maybe went a little bit early in the last run of Q2 with the tyres, but in the car, I was frustrated.
“I have to say now I completely understand the choice once the team explained [to] me the reason. There was some rain on the radar and it’s always so difficult to know if it’s going to be five minutes early or five minutes late and today it was five minutes late.”
“It’s life, it’s part of racing, and tomorrow we’ll try and maximise the race result.”
Carlos Sainz shocked
On the other hand, Sainz was perplexed with Ferrari’s lack of competitiveness in wet conditions, while they had a way better output in similar conditions in Imola this year.
“The last time I drove this car in the wet was Imola, well first and last time, and I really enjoyed it, I felt like we had really good performance there in the wet conditions,” said Sainz.
“And for some reason, this weekend it’s nowhere and doesn’t fully understand why. I’m quite lost, to be honest with why the feeling is not there, and unless it changes, something big tomorrow it’s not going to be easy.
“So there’s nothing really positive about today and the pace we had, we had no pace at any time and it’s strange you know because I love these conditions and I’m normally very quick in them so it particularly hurts to be slow.”
