Victim of a problem on the straight during his final attempt, the Ferrari driver could do no better than sixth in the sprint qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix.
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The Sprint Qualifying session for the Chinese Grand Prix did not turn to Charles Leclerc’s advantage. At the Shanghai circuit, the Monegasque driver could only set the sixth fastest time, finishing nearly a second behind the reference time set by George Russell’s Mercedes.
In a particularly closely contested session, Leclerc found himself outpaced not only by his Ferrari teammate, Lewis Hamilton, who was fourth and about four-tenths faster, but also by the two McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. A disappointing result for the Monegasque, who hoped to play a leading role after encouraging practice sessions earlier in the day.
A problem on the decisive straight
Leclerc’s frustration is largely explained by a technical issue that occurred at the most crucial moment of the session. During his final attempt in SQ3, the Ferrari driver suddenly lost a lot of time on the long back straight, apparently due to a power unit energy deployment problem.
Caught by surprise, Leclerc immediately expressed his confusion over the radio: “But what’s happening? I lost about four-tenths on the straight!”
This incident compromised a lap that nonetheless seemed very promising, preventing the Monegasque driver from competing with the best performances of the session. Speaking to the media, Leclerc did not hide his disappointment after this complicated sprint qualifying.
“It was a very frustrating session”, he admitted. “Unfortunately, when I had a good lap, I lost half a second on the straight for some reason during the second lap in SQ3.”
The Ferrari driver now hopes that the Maranello engineers can quickly identify the source of the problem to prevent it from happening again: “We are going to analyze this and try to understand what happened.”
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Ferrari more competitive in the race?
Despite this mixed result over one lap, Leclerc remains convinced that Ferrari could show a better face in race conditions. According to him, the hierarchy observed during qualifying does not fully reflect the real potential of the cars over a distance.
“This doesn’t really change the picture of our current situation. In the race, we should be relatively a bit stronger than what we show in qualifying.”
The Monegasque believes, however, that Mercedes currently has a clear advantage in the flying lap exercise.
“Mercedes seems to have a head start in qualifying. For some reason, the Mercedes power unit finds a lot of lap time.”
He nuances this gap, however, when it comes to race pace: “We don’t find as much time in qualifying yet, but in the race we are closer. So I hope we can get back at them tomorrow.”
Ferrari is therefore counting on the sprint to close the gap and try to get closer to the Silver Arrows at the Shanghai circuit.
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