Charles Leclerc reflected on his Singapore Grand Prix with “mixed feelings” after rising from P9 on the grid to P5, claiming that he paid the price for what he saw as his own error in qualifying on Saturday.
Ferrari had an up-and-down weekend, with Leclerc and McLaren’s Lando Norris appearing to be in a world of their own at the top of the timesheets during Friday’s practice sessions.
READ MORE: Norris dominates the Singapore GP to slash Verstappen’s title lead again.
However, that performance appeared to have dropped come Saturday, while Leclerc’s qualifying ended in disaster when his only flying lap was removed for breaching track restrictions, leaving the seven-time race winner to express his fury post-session.
about the tyre temperatures. That saw him down in ninth on the grid, leaving him with extra work to do during Sunday’s 62-lap race. After finding himself stuck behind the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso and Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg for many laps, Leclerc was able to make up ground once in free air and had the pace to eventually pass Lewis Hamilton for fifth place. Despite trying to close in on Hamilton’s Mercedes team mate George Russell, Leclerc had to settle for P5 and admitted later on that he felt a range of emotions when looking back on his weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.
“It’s mixed feelings,” the 26-year-old explained. “Today I think we did a really, really good job and I think there wasn’t anything on the table to do better. We had a frustrating first part of the race where we couldn’t do anything but just wait, and then once Nico and Fernando pitted I could push. “We had good pace, we stopped and [had] a really strong second stint that brought us back to P5, so on that I was really happy. However, a bit of a disappointing weekend.
“Yesterday I arrived here [to the media pen] very angry because of the tyres – looking back at it, yes the tyres were not exactly in the right window, but this happens very often in qualifying and I think the main issue was me locking up into Turn 1 and going wide and having track limits and a bad lap and everything.
“In retrospect, I believe I was the one to blame yesterday, and it happens – there will be qualifyings where we do well and qualifyings where you make a mistake, especially when you just have one lap and then pay the consequences.
“The only issue is that not doing a lap in Q3 here in Singapore is likely to be the most expensive track. But, again, if I only look at today, I think we did a great job. If I look at the weekend as a whole, I paid the price for my error from yesterday.”
FACTS AND STATS: Norris became the fifth winner in five years at the first Safety Car-free Singapore Grand Prix.
When asked if accepting responsibility for what happened in qualifying, combined with the SF-24’s strong performance in Sunday’s race, had given him confidence for the remaining six races of the season – given that addressing his own mistakes may be easier than having to fix car issues – Leclerc responded: “Yes, as I said, I’ll get it right sometimes and wrong sometimes, and yesterday I got it wrong.
“I will bounce back next weekend – I mean next race weekend, because now we’ve got a bit of a break – but in Austin with hopefully a good quali again and a good weekend overall.”
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