MONTREAL, Canada — Charles Leclerc was at a loss to explain Ferrari’s lack of pace during qualifying at the Canadian Grand Prix, saying his car simply did not have enough grip to compete for a place in the top ten.
Two weeks ago, Leclerc won the Monaco Grand Prix from pole position but will start 11th on Sunday’s grid in Canada ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz in 12th place.
He missed out on a place in the top ten after Ferrari sent him out on a used set of soft tyres for his final run in Q2 rather than a new set, but said the car already felt off the pace since final practice earlier on Saturday afternoon.
“We are just not fast enough and unfortunately that’s it,” Leclerc said. “I mean, in FP3 [final practice] we were nowhere on the dry, in qualifying we were nowhere on the dry as well.
“I don’t have any explanations for now. In FP3 already we felt that something was wrong, we couldn’t see what was wrong. It was exactly the same in qualifying, where it definitely felt like something was wrong but nothing we could see was wrong.
“So the grip was just extremely poor in the first sector especially and then once you slide in the first sector it’s a snowball effect and you never really get the performance out of the car. So yes, difficult weekend.”
Sainz said the lack of performance relative to Ferrari’s rivals had come as a surprise to the team, which was tipped to have one of the most competitive cars around the Montreal circuit this weekend.
“We are a bit surprised too, everyone knows, because since FP3, really, we saw we were slow and this weekend was going to be a tough one and you never expect to go from fighting for a win and pole position to being out in Q2, but this is Formula One.
“I’ve seen worse things happen and we will go back and analyse why we’re struggling around here.
“I think right now, I can just tell you we are lacking grip and our ride doesn’t look as good as it did in Monaco. For these two reasons, lack of grip, warm-up, ride, everything around Canada seems trickier than Monaco.”
Source: www.espn.com