Charles Leclerc has explained the decision to trial two warm-up laps in Q3 at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was related to his discomfort with Ferrari’s Formula 1 car.
For the second consecutive weekend in 2024, Leclerc trailed three-tenths behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen as the pair locked out the front row of the grid in Jeddah.
But while the other drivers in the top 10 shootout elected to do the traditional one preparation run, Leclerc opened the final stage with two laps before his timed effort.
Ferrari’s gambit failed to work as Leclerc made a minor mistake at the final corner and registered the fourth fastest lap, eight-tenths down on Verstappen’s benchmark.
Although the Monegasque driver reverted to one build-up lap and secured a seventh consecutive front-row slot, he admits he struggled with the balance of his SF-24.
“Well it’s good to be starting on the front row. However, today I didn’t really find the right feeling with the car,” Leclerc expressed.
“For some reason with the new tyres we didn’t have the car in the right place which I hope that for tomorrow it will improve a little bit for some reason.
“We had quite a lot of oversteer and just the rear is not quite ready, so in Q3 we tried something different we went for a prep lap which didn’t help at all and then in the second lap I put everything together and I don’t think there was much more. But today the feeling wasn’t as good as what I had what I was expecting considering yesterday.”
Leclerc elucidated that his balance on used rubber was more aligned with the feeling he was expecting from the car when he was fitted with a new set of Soft tyres.
Asked to expand upon the reasoning behind Ferrari’s inventive Q3 tactic, Leclerc added: “Just to have one more lap in the tyre, because the balance felt a bit more in line with what I expected on a scrub tyre, on used tyres.
“So we tried to have a prep lap just to make sure to try everything and to see whether it was feeling any better. But unfortunately it didn’t so that’s what we were trying to achieve.
“However, the results were not positive. So then anyway, I don’t think there was time to do a prep push, but I wouldn’t have done that because that felt worse.
“So, there’s still something we need to understand about this qualifying because the feeling wasn’t quite right from Q1 and we need to understand in order to be better in the future.”
Leclerc had posted the fastest overall time in Bahrain despite Verstappen taking pole and second place in FP3 heightened hopes that he’d be in the mix in Saudi Arabia.
“I mean, more than expectations of positions, I had expectations of feeling and balance and that’s not what I found today, which for sure we left a little bit of performance on the table.
“However, yeah, Max did a great lap and today they were just stronger. So we’ve got to work on that and try and understand for the future what happened for qualifying on that first-time lap.”
However, the Ferrari protege remains “optimistic” that Ferrari can challenge Red Bull in race trim, even though Verstappen surged to a 22-second win last time out.
“I’m always optimistic, so we’ll try our best,” he said regarding Ferrari’s race prospects.
“However, we know that normally they [Red Bull] have the upper hand and they have a bit more pace on the race than in qualifying.
“And looking at the gaps today, it’s going to be a difficult one to get the top spot tomorrow, but I’ll do everything as always.”
