Charles Leclerc fronted up to a “stupid” error which cost his Sauber team vital time on the final day of pre-season testing in Spain.
Ferrari-backed Leclerc has stepped up to Formula 1 with Sauber and escaped unscathed after two spins into the gravel earlier in the test campaign at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
However, Leclerc spun through Turn 11 on Friday morning and clipped the barriers, the result of which – along with a couple of other technical glitches – cost him vital track time.
“I’ve done an error that has cost me quite a lot, I learned from it,” said Leclerc, whose mistake came on his 18th lap of running.
“I think it was a bit stupid from my side to do it so early in the day, but it happens, I was pushing, the pace was very good on the lap I was doing, it’s completely my fault.
“I will obviously be a lot more disappointed with myself if this happens in the race in Melbourne, but I think I’ve had some good information from this, I just feel a bit angry about myself.”
Leclerc, though, was nonetheless lifted by the progress made by Sauber, and feels he has enhanced his knowledge of long-run performance.
“I think performance wise we are looking good, a lot better than how we were looking last week, I think we improved a lot, we just need to keep going like this,” he said.
“Probably the race runs [are my biggest improvement] because I obviously had never done any race runs before two days ago.
“I did my second one – actually not even a full one because of my crash – but I’ve learned a lot on the race runs.”
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