Charles Leclerc hoping for dry race after Ferrari qualifying 'disaster'

Charles Leclerc is hoping for a sky void of rain on Sunday to help Ferrari recover from a Turkish GP qualifying session which the Monegasque labeled “a disaster”.

Both Chares and Scuderia teammate Sebastian Vettel had shown a reasonably good pace in Friday’s challenging but dry practice sessions.

Chares also delivered a good performance in Saturday’s wet FP3, but it all went down the river in qualifying a few hours later as Leclerc and Vettel failed to turn on their tyres and exit Q2.

“Was feeling really good in the wet during FP3, but we couldn’t switch on the tyres in qualifying for some reasons and it’s been a disaster. Disappointed about today but the race is tomorrow!” Leclerc wrote on Twitter.

Speaking to the media after Ferrari’s disappointing afternoon, the two-time Grand Prix winner was at a loss to understand why he hadn’t been able to extend into the afternoon his morning pace.

“Unfortunately, our performance was worse than expected, after a reasonably good weekend so far,” he said.

“This morning it was raining quite hard. But I could feel the grip and I was confident with the car, but this afternoon it was a completely different picture.

“We just could not make the tyres work in quali, we were struggling in the rain and being so far off the pace is really not good. I’m hoping for a dry race tomorrow.”

Sebastian Vettel echoed his teammate’s explanations, insisting that Pirelli’s wet tyre was Ferrari’s “weakest” compound.

“We were struggling just to generate heat in the tyres, and in a situation like this I think a couple of degrees makes all the difference,” said the German.

“Unfortunately, we were not able to maximize our potential and I felt the extreme wet was our weakest compound. I’m quite sure the car was better than P12, but not in these conditions.”