CHARLES LECLERC BEMOANS ‘UNDRIVEABLE’ FERRARI AFTER Q1 EXIT IN SPAIN

Charles Leclerc felt his Ferrari was “undriveable” going through the left-handers around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Saturday, having fallen out of qualifying in Q1.

The Ferrari driver is set to line up on the final row of the grid after qualifying P19 in a session where the track was evolving rapidly, but despite having been held up after being called to the weighbridge in the pit lane, Leclerc’s final attempt was not good enough to get himself out of the drop zone and into Q2.

Team-mate Carlos Sainz was able to place his Ferrari on the front row of the grid alongside Max Verstappen for Sunday, but Leclerc said he had felt positive about his performance behind the wheel after practice, so believes there is “something off” with his car at the moment.

“I don’t have the answer for now. The only thing I can say is that the left-hand corners were undriveable,” Leclerc told Sky Sports F1 after he dropped out of qualifying.

“The right-hand corners, the feeling was very similar to this morning, but there’s just something off in the left-hand corners that we need to analyse and understand because it was very far off what I expected.”

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When asked to elaborate on the reasons behind his premature exit from qualifying, Leclerc had initially felt that not getting the tyres in the right window may have been to blame.

But that proved not to be the case and instead found there to be “very weird behaviour” from his SF-23 while he was driving, which he will look to rectify during the race on Sunday.

“I thought it was the tyres on the first set, but then we went on the second set and the feeling was exactly the same,” he said.

“I just had no grip at all in the left-hand corners from the rears, so we’ll check well the car and I’ll be very surprised if everything was fine.

“I had so many moments and even during the first red flag, I nearly lost it and put it in the gravel in the left hand corner and this was just very, very weird behaviour, so we’ll have to check the car.

“Even in the tricky conditions of this morning I was feeling really good with the car. So there’s something off.”

2023-06-03T16:27:31Z dg43tfdfdgfd