Charles Leclerc says the British Grand Prix on Sunday will see him going “into the unknown” after he was forced to sit out FP2 at Silverstone.
An electrical issue prior to the start of the session which wasn’t fixed before the chequered flag meant Leclerc set zero laps during the 60-minute session.
Teams usually use the second practice outing to undergo race simulations in preparation for the grand prix later in the weekend.
The weather forecast at Silverstone reads that there is a high chance of rain on Saturday, which would leave Leclerc with little dry weather data ahead of Sunday’s grand prix.
Speaking after Fridyay practice had concluded, Leclerc says that he is heading into the unknown after sitting out FP2.
“It [the electrical issue] shouldn’t have any influence on our weekend apart from obviously the lack of kilometres and laps in FP2,” he said.
“That’s a bit unfortunate because that’s normally where we prepare the race. Sunday seems to be dry, so we’ll go a bit into the unknown there.
“But tomorrow should be very different with rain around. So let’s see.”
On the other side of the Ferrari garage, Carlos Sainz enjoyed a positive session, ending up in second place and just 0.022s behind Max Verstappen.
While Leclerc says Ferrari expects it will be closer to Red Bull in qualifying, he still ancticipates it will be unable to compete on race day amid concerns over Ferrari’s tyre degradation.
“We seem to be very strong in qualifying, we seem to be good over one lap but then in the race we seem to struggle a bit more,” he said.
“In FP2 with Carlos [and] on my side in FP1, it’s very difficult to compare, everybody was on different programmes.
“But obviously the pace that Carlos has shown in FP2 is quite representative. That’s where we need to work the most because we seem to be on the back foot for the race pace.
“We are on it, we know that this [tyre degredation] is going to be the main thing to take care of come Sunday. But again, let’s see. I’m confident that we’ll do a good job.”
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