Charles Leclerc willing to ‘take some risks’ to negate grid penalty

Charles Leclerc says he will take additional risks at the start of Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix in an effort to reclaim lost ground.

Leclerc made it through to Q2 for the sixth successive event, having used his previous appearances as a platform to score points, achieving the feat in four of the last five Grands Prix.

However, Leclerc will drop from 13th to 18th on the grid on account of a five-place penalty incurred for a gearbox change, which came as a result of a suspension issue during third practice.

“I will have to take some risks at the start because of that suspension failure that finished in a gearbox failure but it’s life sometimes, it happens in motorsport,” he said.

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“Hopefully we will have a good start, a good first lap. It’s quite optimistic to target points, it’s still the target but it’s going to be very difficult to get them.”

Leclerc outlined that Sauber must not take its current Q2 appearances for granted, describing the job he and the team is currently doing as “crazy”.

“I think this is the difficult part – to still enjoy the Q2,” he said.

“It can look like it’s normal now from the outside but I think we are doing quite a crazy job every qualifying since a bit.

“In the last run of Q2 we had some balance issue but overall 13th is very positive.

“The balance was not how I wanted in the last run of Q2, I did some mistake, but the car was not helping me also to make the lap I wanted but before that we did everything pretty well.

“It happens sometimes but I really insist we should be very satisfied with P13.”