Scuderia Ferrari had decided to replace the chassis of Charles Leclerc ahead of the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix after the Maranello team found a crack at the end of the qualifying session in which the Monegasque was mystified by a lack of grip.
While team-mate Carlos Sainz was able to advance into Q3 on medium tyres and went on to finish in seventh place on the grid for the race tomorrow, Charles Leclerc had to settle for P13 on the grid despite a late-Q2 run on the soft tyre.
Having just narrowly escaped elimination in the first segment, the Monegasque sounded absolutely bewildered when told of a nine-tenths deficit to Sainz after the first runs in Q2, and admitted after the session that he was “just slow” all the way through and not sure why.
“I never felt like I put the tyres in the right window, and I just slid around, just being limited by grip – not by mistakes, or by an axle in particular, no balance in particular, just grip, I didn’t have enough grip. In qualifying, I think only in the first sector I was losing around five or six tenths and I had no idea why. We need to look into it, whether there was anything strange or not. If there is not anything strange, then I would be very happy to understand what I did wrong.” – Charles Leclerc said.
It has now emerged that there was indeed something “strange” with Charles Leclerc’s SF21, as Ferrari confirmed a crack had been found in the chassis.
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