Leclerc plays down the importance of his session-topping lap time

Despite topping the second practice session, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was cautious when assessing the Scuderia’s chances at this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc had a difficult start to his race weekend in Baku, having crashed into the barriers on his first soft-tyre hot lap in Free Practice 1. Although Ferrari seemingly repaired his car for the second one-hour practice, he constantly complained about the behaviour of his SF-24 on his first laps on the medium compound.

While his race engineer Bryan Bozzi claimed that the team did not see any issues through the data, the Monegasque kept complaining, reporting that “the car is bent somewhere”.

Having then spent the middle part of the session in his garage while Ferrari was inspecting the car, Leclerc managed to put his problems to one side and charged to the top of the timesheets on a 1m 43.484s.

Speaking of the crash, the seven-time F1 race winner noted: “I mean, the crash, there’s not much to go into. I braked a little bit too much on the right, the track was still dirty, I locked up and it was too late to go to the right [run-off] – so I went into the wall.

“That wasn’t great to start the weekend, but I still had a lot of confidence in the car, so there wasn’t much problem. Then the thing is that when we started FP2 there was an actual problem on the car that we saw later on, once I stopped, and we changed that particular part.

“It was nothing to do with the crash before, so the mechanics have done a really good job. We just had a problem with one new part that we had just put on the car. I won’t go too much into details but that was obviously giving me a very strange feeling with the steering wheel.

“We changed that, went again and then it was fine. It was not as many laps as what I would have hoped for on this Friday, but competitive anyway.”

Although he secured the pole position in Baku in the last three years, the Monegasque was cautious, stating that he expects a very tight fight in qualifying.

“It’s very tight [at the front], but it’s very difficult to see also with different engine modes of everybody. It’s one of the tracks that I quite like and we’ve been pretty quick in the past, but that doesn’t mean it will be the case for tomorrow.

“We still have to work on the car, there’s plenty to do to improve. There’s the driving to be improved quite a bit, because I was still taking a little bit my references in FP2, but again, we are fast, so that’s a good sign. Hopefully just more to come tomorrow.”

On the other side of the Ferrari garage, Carlos Sainz wound up fourth, just under half a second off the pace set by team mate Leclerc, as he explained some problems of his own behind the wheel.

“We had a few offs, but I think everyone did, the track was so tricky to drive, so dirty, so slippery,” he commented. “[Being] five seconds slower than last year gives you the data, that you know how much we were all struggling out there.

“We kept it more or less clean, did the whole run plan. We went through some issues with the brakes in FP1 and managed to make it better for FP2. I’m not feeling 100% with my neck, also. I think I slept really badly last night and I cannot move almost. I managed to make it through the day and [I’ll be] ready for tomorrow.”

When pushed on to assess Ferrari’s chances this weekend, the Madrid-born driver echoed his team-mate’s words, claiming that it will be an extremely close fight at the sharp end of the field.

“We are confident we are on the pace together with the Red Bulls, the McLarens and the Mercs. I think it is going to be extremely tight and it is all about tyre preparation, putting the lap together, being at the right time the right place on track with the yellow flags, the red flags, and hopefully we are with the right side of things.”