Charles Leclerc admits mistakes in qualifying: "I could've been fourth, I didn’t do a good job"

Charles Leclerc admits mistakes in qualifying: “I could’ve been fourth, I didn’t do a good job”. Charles Leclerc takes responsibility for his sixth-place finish in qualifying.

Charles Leclerc takes full responsibility for his sixth-place finish in qualifying at the Dutch Grand Prix, considering that a second-row start was within reach, even though Zandvoort highlights the weaknesses of the Ferrari SF-25. A difficult Friday made preparation for qualifying especially challenging: Leclerc complained that the car had changed significantly, which did not help with consistent performance throughout the weekend.The sixth position obtained by Charles Leclerc at the end of qualifying was, by the Monegasque driver’s own admission, the bare minimum. Looking back at the start of the weekend, the result was far from guaranteed, as the base setup of the car that Ferrari brought to Zandvoort proved far from optimal. The team had to work overnight between Friday and Saturday to address the issues, and partially the situation was corrected. Yet some regret remains.

“It was very difficult,” Charles Leclerc commented after qualifying. “On weekends like this, you arrive at qualifying without having any real references. I didn’t know what to expect from the car due to all the changes made since FP1. That said, it’s not an excuse. I didn’t do a good job in qualifying. In Q3, I couldn’t put together the lap I was capable of. Fourth position was realistically the best result we could have aimed for today with our car.”

“If we then look at the weekend as a whole, it could have been worse,” Charles Leclerc confirmed. “Sixth place is normally the lowest we expect to achieve, but this weekend, sixth in qualifying was actually my best result. Still, as I said, I could have done better.” The gap between Charles Leclerc and pole-sitter Oscar Piastri was 0.678 seconds—a significant margin on a track that is completed in just sixty-eight seconds.

Charles Leclerc emphasized the difficulty of getting familiar with the car when setup changes are so drastic. In some areas, such as finding the limits at certain points of the circuit, it was almost as if Ferrari had not run at all on Friday.

“I believe the characteristics of this circuit highlight our weaknesses. You can see it clearly in turns 9 and 10; it’s incredible how much time we lose in that section. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do. We changed the car a lot compared to yesterday—probably one of the biggest setup changes of the season between Friday and Saturday—and that doesn’t help with consistency across the weekend, or in building the sessions properly, one after another. It wasn’t easy, but it was what we had to do considering the negative Friday we had.” – the Monegasque driver concluded.