The package of updates introduced yesterday had brought some shy smiles to the Ferrari garage, but qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix was a real cold shower, at least for Charles Leclerc.
With a track still dirty due to the rain that fell in the late morning, the Monegasque was never able to find the feeling with his SF-23 and found himself eliminated at the end of Q1 and not even by a matter of thousandths, given that tomorrow he will even start 19th.
In the first run, the feeling was that it could only be a problem with getting the tires into the right window. However, when a new set of soft tires was fitted, it was clearer that there is probably something wrong with his single-seater, as Charles confirmed in the usual interviews.
“Honestly, I’d be very surprised if the car is OK. Now we have to look closely at the data, but above all at the car, because there was something wrong. We rode in these conditions this morning and it was very good,” Leclerc told the Sky Sports F1 microphones.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“The thing that tells me that something was wrong is that I was doing right-hand corners and it went perfectly, while when I was doing left-hand corners there was something on the right rear that didn’t feel right. We have to check, because today there was cost a lot, but tomorrow we have to get back to having a good feeling to get back in front”, he added.
Now, in fact, it will be important to try to understand what happened and resolve this situation. The problem is not yet clear, but Leclerc has no big doubts that something is not right.
“I don’t have the answer for now, I should look at the data before commenting. But I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something on the car that wasn’t in the right place or something strange. The feeling was completely different from what I had from the beginning of the year”.
“I almost hit the wall during the red flag, I almost lost it and I was going at 60 km/h, so you have to watch why I don’t get something back,” he concluded.
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Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
