“Oh, okay. That’s fast,” Charles Leclerc had to admit on Friday when he was given the times of World Cup rival Max Verstappen. Ferrari didn’t stand a chance against the Dutchman in the Formula 1 practice session at Spa-Francorchamps and ended up 0.862 seconds behind him.
Nevertheless, Leclerc was reasonably satisfied afterwards: “In general, it wasn’t a bad day and we tested a lot of things,” he says and does not want to commit to a comparison due to the different programs on the first day after the summer break.
“The pace with little fuel seems to be bad, but with a lot of fuel it was okay,” said the Monegasque. “We wait and see and keep working, trying to take a step overnight to come back stronger tomorrow.”
The fact that the pace wasn’t that great for one lap should have a reason and shouldn’t be that bad. Because Leclerc doesn’t need qualifying pace in Belgium. Because he exchanges MGU-K and energy storage and comes over the limit, he has to go back 15 starting positions. Because he is also replacing the gearbox, there are another ten starting places.
He will start far behind anyway. “We didn’t pay as much attention to qualifying pace as usual because it’s a bit useless,” said Leclerc. “We paid more attention to race pace because we’re trying to get back up front as quickly as possible.”
But: Max Verstappen is also faced with this problem, so the Red Bull driver should not have paid too much attention to qualifying on Friday.
Chance for Carlos Sainz?
The absence of the two top favorites at the front could be an opportunity for other drivers. Carlos Sainz has not yet received a penalty for this weekend and is therefore in a good position to start. But the Spaniard doesn’t believe that he could get bored alone at the top.
“You’re never alone in Formula 1,” he says. “If it’s not Max and Charles, it will be Checo [Perez]Lewis [Hamilton] and George [Russell] be with whom I will fight. It’s never easy, so I have to focus and try to have a clean weekend.”
On Friday he only managed that to a limited extent, because with fifth place (+1.142 seconds) there was still a lot of room for improvement. “To be honest, I felt quite comfortable and was happy with the car,” says Sainz. “I know that fifth place doesn’t look very competitive in the end, but I was happy with the car in the first session.”
Wrong direction in the second practice
In the second practice, Ferrari then made some changes “that may not have gone in the right direction,” he says. “But if you give me back the car from practice one, then I’m sure that we can be at the pace.”
“It’s true that Verstappen looked very quick today – especially with fresh softs in the second practice session,” said the Spaniard. “We were closer in the long run but it seems to be going well for him this weekend so we need to get the maximum out of it.”
“If we get the settings right, we’ll be more competitive. Will it be enough to keep the same pace? I don’t know. You never know.”