“Now I am angry”- Charles Leclerc explains confusion that contributed to Q2 exit

“Now I am angry”- Charles Leclerc comments on the confusion that led to his exit in the Russian Grand Prix’s Q2 exit on Saturday.

If one thought that the Russian Grand Prix would be any different for Ferrari then they were wrong, as the Italian racing team once again saw an embarrassing exit from the qualifying round.

Though Charles Leclerc narrowly missed out on Q3 by just 0.043 seconds losing out to Esteban Ocon who was just beneath his neck throughout Q2.

Leclerc later explained what led to his unprecedented elimination and he is enraged about the confusion between him and his team, which added to the situation.

“They told me that I had Ocon behind me, about one or two seconds from me,” Leclerc said. “Instead I think it was further back, I think I had more margin. Now I am angry [as] everything is still fresh.

“I have to calm down. The race is tomorrow, the race is where they will award points. But for me, it’s a difficult weekend. In practice I hadn’t driven well, then I started to find the rhythm in qualifying. But I was not able to show the potential of the car, and I’m sorry”.

Arghh 😬
It was frustrating not having a clean second lap in Q2 but we understand what we did wrong and we’ll comunicate better in the future in these situations. Having the possibility to chose the tyres for the race start will hopefully benefit us. Starting P11 for the race 🏎 pic.twitter.com/GWFhFmnJXV

— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) September 26, 2020

Relieved to not crash with Sebastian Vettel

“It was quite scary, but hopefully he’s fine, and it was not much worse than that,” Leclerc said. Now it’s more the disappointment of not going to Q3.”

Vettel echoed Leclerc’s struggles with the Ferrari car around the Sochi Autodrom when reviewing his qualifying, saying that it forced him to take risks that ultimately led to his crash.

“Already in Turn 2, I lost the car, and in Turn 4 I lost it again, and couldn’t catch it any more, ” Vettel said. In qualy I was struggling, especially in the first sector. I tried to obviously take a little bit more risk.

“I lost the car already in 2 and again in 4. Not happy obviously, but yeah, compared to the morning session, I struggled quite a bit in the afternoon

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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