A record first sector, a Ferrari comfortable over the curbs and in Melbourne corners. And a driver who didn’t seem affected by yesterday’s crash in Free Practice 1. In Canadian GP qualifying, all the ingredients seemed to be there for a Charles Leclerc pole position, but instead came a mistake that forced the Monegasque to abort his lap and settle for a disappointing eighth place.
In the middle sector, where Charles Leclerc lost the chance to complete a competitive lap, Charles encountered Isack Hadjar’s Racing Bulls ahead of him — though the two were separated by several dozen metres.
According to the Ferrari driver, due to the nature of the circuit, that distance still affected him aerodynamically, to the point where he lost control of the car a couple of times (front end first, then rear), throwing away any shot at pole.
“Isack wasn’t exactly in the way,” Charles Leclerc admitted right after qualifying. “But 100 metres on a track like this, you really feel it. It pisses me off because when I saw the first sector and the lap I was doing, I was confident we could get pole — it could’ve been ours.”
Speaking further to Sky Sport F1, the Ferrari driver didn’t hide his frustration: “Now if you look, I’m eight tenths off, and Lewis is six. I’m very angry because in FP3 I felt comfortable. What happened yesterday didn’t affect me at all. I felt good right away. But now we have to start over again.” – the Monegasque driver concluded at the end of the qualifying session for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.
What makes it all harder is a now-consistent issue: Ferrari clearly struggles on Saturdays. And often, that’s clipped the Prancing Horse’s wings on Sundays as well.
“It’s a bad Saturday. And it’s been two years now that our Saturdays are worse than our Sundays. I’ll try to do something special here too, tomorrow. But we’ve made life harder for ourselves.”
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