Charles Leclerc rued not showing Ferrari’s potential as he thought third was possible without the errors he made on his last Q3 run at Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix.
Ferrari’s slump in competitiveness has continued at the Red Bull Ring as Leclerc came home in seventh in the Sprint race, two places behind team-mate Carlos Sainz.
However, the Italian marque appeared a more competitive proposition through grand prix qualifying as Leclerc lied third once the opening runs in Q3 were completed.
But Leclerc was unable to string the lap together at the end as he ventured wide across the gravel at Turn 5 and then lost the rear heading into the penultimate corner.
The Monegasque driver, who will line up sixth in tomorrow’s race, lamented his mistakes as he reckons that Ferrari harboured the inherent speed to be in the top three.
“It’s frustrating, because whenever you know you have the potential to do well, and you do a mistake yourself, it always hurts,” Leclerc admitted.
“But it’s like this, it’s not a disaster. P7 is not good, I think a P3 was possible today. Turn 1 and 3 was really, really good in my last lap.
“I was two-tenths faster than my lap, and then I did a mistake in Turn 4, tried even more to catch back some time in Turn 6, lost it, tried the same in Turn 9, lost it. It’s life.
“I think it paid off more than it hurt this year by pushing that way in qualifying. Today it bit me. And yeah.
“It’s obviously, I’m a bit disappointed, especially because the team we had two races or two, three races where we had a tough time.
“I felt like today was an opportunity to be back in the top three. But I didn’t do a good job on that second lap. But the first lap on the scrubbed tyre was really good.”
Leclerc at least took optimism from the set-up changes on his car improving the balance compared to earlier in the weekend as he bids to make progress in the race.
“I think it’s looking better than what it looked for this morning, because we are in a different configuration that should help a little bit more the race pace tomorrow.
“So yeah. I’m looking forward to it, and we’ll see where we are tomorrow.”
And while he has cautioned that Ferrari will not be able to maintain pace with Max Verstappen or Lando Norris, Leclerc is convinced the team can battle Mercedes.
“I think Lando and Max is not going to be possible tomorrow,” he assessed. “They are too fast this weekend.
“I think Oscar behind is going to be tricky, but he’s starting behind so maybe we can keep that position.
“With the Mercedes, we’ve been close all weekend, but I felt like we can have, if we do everything perfect, we can beat them.”
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