In a strong comeback after his crash in the second practice session for the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc admits that he “kind of closed his eyes” as he was going through Turn 22 at Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
Charles Leclerc suffered a huge crash on Friday, which led to massive damage to his SF21 car, despite the fact that Ferrari did not have to change his power unit or chassis, which would have led to penalties for today’s starting grid in Saudi Arabia.
This didn’t stop Charles from putting in a stellar performance on Saturday in the qualifying session, as the Ferrari driver finished P4 with a great final lap, just half a second down on pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton while splitting the fater Red Bull cars.
The Monegasque driver admitted that when he first came up to Turn 22, the corner of his FP2 crash, he had a small moment at that corner and briefly closed his eyes.
“I don’t think we could have expected anything more than that” – Charles Leclerc said, according to Autosport.
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“The lap was really, really good – really, really on the limit. Turn 22 I kind of closed the eyes on my fast lap, and it worked out! It was a very, very good lap, and I’m very happy to be starting P4. Eyes closed is just an expression, I’m pretty sure I had my eyes open! But yeah, I lost the rear, and I honestly thought that the end will have been the same as yesterday. But this time I kept it on track, and made it stick. So I was very happy.” – he explained
The 24-year-old has already shown this season to be good at qualifying around street circuits.
“The confidence in the streets circuits is what makes the most difference at the end. And overall, every time we managed to give me a car that gives me the confidence, which was very, very difficult here, especially with what happened yesterday. I just had to do step by step from the first laps of FP3 to the last lap in Q3. And in the last lap of Q3 I could finally put everything together and just go for it. And it worked out. If you look at Turn 22, I think all day I haven’t been very confident with what happened yesterday, and just in the last lap of Q3 I gained something like two-tenths against all of my other laps before. So I just went for it.” – Charles Leclerc concluded.
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