“Carlos managed it, I couldn’t”: Charles Leclerc analyzes “strange” Las Vegas qualifying session. Fourth place for Charles Leclerc in the Las Vegas GP qualifying.

Although the front row didn’t materialize as hoped, Charles Leclerc can still smile ahead of tomorrow’s race at the 6.2-kilometre Las Vegas Strip Circuit in Nevada, USA and in terms of the Constructors’ Championship, with Ferrari starting from second and fourth positions. McLaren, on the other hand, is licking its wounds, as they were the real disappointment of today’s qualifying.

While the MCL-38 never seemed truly comfortable with the extremely low temperatures of the Las Vegas circuit, the SF-24 managed to hold its ground, despite the biting cold in the city of sin that had concerned Ferrari’s engineers before the weekend.

Charles Leclerc lost almost all his time to George Russell and Carlos Sainz in the first sector, falling three-tenths behind the duo who will start from the front row tomorrow. However, an excellent second and third sector allowed him to recover and place his Ferrari on the second row.

A bittersweet qualifying
“It’s a shame because over multiple laps, we are very strong, and I feel very comfortable with the car, but it was a disaster getting the tires up to temperature,” the Monegasque commented after the qualifying session for the Las Vegas Grand Prix in an interview for Sky Sport.

“Carlos managed it, and I never did, since FP1. (The result) is disappointing. I tried, I tried to work on it, but I never found the right way. In FP1, FP2, and FP3, I would post good lap times, but only after three or four laps in the session. Carlos, on the other hand, managed it immediately, and that made the difference in qualifying. I hope tomorrow I’ll be more in sync with the race pace.” – he pointed out.

“Even though things didn’t go smoothly, they didn’t for anyone because in these conditions, you see a super strong Hamilton in FP3, then in qualifying, for one reason or another… these are details that are really hard to understand. Speaking for myself, sometimes you need to slow down by 10 km/h in the final corner to create some space, but then you get to Turn 1 and lose front-end grip. That’s what happened to me in Q3. So, strange things happen.”

Finally, on the battle with McLaren for the Constructors’ Championship: “Once again, we need to stay ahead like we did in Brazil and as we’ve done well over the last three weekends. Starting second and fourth ahead of both McLarens isn’t a bad day, but we need to capitalize tomorrow.” – the Ferrari man concluded.