Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc shared his thoughts on drivers struggling in the extreme heat and humidity during this evening’s race:
Charles Leclerc:
“I think everybody [struggled], no exceptions. I think it was the toughest race of our careers as drivers. The heat was absolutely crazy. Secondly, we’ve got a lot of high-speed corners. And, third, which I think is the most significant thing, is adding three stops. We were all speaking about tyres that it would be a full push race for tyres with little management. But I think we maybe underestimated that that meant we were under so much more stress in the high-speed corners, which is normally not the case. It’s difficult to put into words how difficult it was. It was twice as difficult as a race like Singapore in the past.”
“Physically, it‘s not like we are tired, I mean the muscles are not that tired, it‘s the dehydration that is so bad, you lose so much water, that the vision gets really bad towards the end of the race especially in the highspeed with the g-forces, the reflexes are also… At a point where you are asking yourself whether we should revise a little bit the amount of laps because we had a look at the end of the race where we are sitting down and resting, and we look each other in the eyes and you could understand that some drivers were… “Honestly this is the toughest race by far that we have done in our career. For three main reasons, one is obviously the heat, second is all the highspeed corners, three, which is the main reason, having three mandatory pitstops, pushing quali laps after quali laps.” – Charles Leclerc pointed out at the end of the Qatar Grand Prix.
Esteban Ocon to Sky Sports F1:
“I was throwing up by lap 15, 16. For two laps I think. I was doing that and thinking ‘s***, it’s going to be a long one’. Get it under control just mentally and just focus on what I’ve got to try and do. I’ve never had that in the past. I’ve always been able to do two race distances in the car, that’s what I’ve always been training for, but today it was just the hot air and how hot the engine is from behind the car. I don’t think we particularly sealed the cockpit too well. It must have been like 80 degrees inside the car. I’m glad that next year we come back in December here.”
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