Charles Leclerc had a horrible qualifying session at the Spanish Grand Prix. The Ferrari driver was knocked out in Q1 itself after he finished the session in 19th place. What made it even worse for him is that his teammate Carlos Sainz will start from the front row in P2 in the same car. After the qualifying session was over, Leclerc explained that something must have been wrong with his car, which caused him to finish P19.
The Monegasque did not feel anything wrong with the Ferrari during the practice session. However, he claimed that the car was behaving very weirdly during the quali. “We’ll have to check the car. Even this morning in the tricky conditions I was feeling really good with the car so there’s something off,” said Leclerc.
Ferrari hasn’t been able to provide Leclerc with a car that can challenge for wins in the 2023 season. The Scuderia have managed to claim only one podium in the first six races. If what Leclerc is saying is true about the car, then Ferrari has a much bigger problem to solve. If they find something wrong with the data and have to work on the car, then Leclerc might even have to start from the pitlane.
Charles Leclerc does not have any answers regarding his Qualifying mishap
Leclerc was interviewed by Sky Sports right after he was knocked out from qualifying. He explained that he does not have any kind of explanation for his performance. However, he said that the car was not feeling how it used to feel before. “I don’t have an answer right now. I need to look at the data, the feeling was completely different from everything I had this year,” said Leclerc.
He backed up his claim by pointing out an incident that he had while he was driving really slowly during qualifying. There was a short red flag period during qualifying when Valtteri Bottas brought some gravel onto the track after he spun out. During the red flag, when all the cars were going slowly, Leclerc nearly crashed out. “I almost went into the wall in the first red flag. I was at 60 km/h. something is not right to me,” said Leclerc
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has spoken out in defense of Charles Leclerc after the horrifying result. He explained that he trusts Leclerc and it must have been something to do with the car that caused the poor result. He said, “We haven’t understood what it is yet; we need to figure it out. I don’t know what happened, but I believe something broke. I trust Charles’ feelings”
Charles Leclerc’s day got even worse
Leclerc’s day went from bad to worse when he was taken by the officials to the medical center. Speculations stated that it was most likely a routine anti-doping test.
Ferrari fans did not waste a single opportunity to mock Ferrari’s performance. Some of them claimed that the officials took him to the medical center because they couldn’t believe that he was still sane after driving the undrivable Ferrari.
Either way, Leclerc has a lot to do tomorrow if he wants to salvage something from the weekend. If Ferrari can figure out what went wrong with the car, there is a slight chance he might be able to fight back and sneak into the points.
