“Difficult to take” falling to back of grid after lap time deletion

Charles Leclerc took responsibility for the mistake which led to him qualifying on the back row of the grid for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Ferrari’s hopes of beating McLaren to the constructors’ championship took a blow yesterday when Leclerc was given a 10-place grid penalty for exceeding his allocation of power unit components. They suffered another setback when Leclerc failed to progress beyond the second round of qualifying.

Leclerc set the quickest time towards the end of Q2. However the time was then deleted as he ran slightly beyond the track limits at the exit of turn one.

Several drivers made similar mistakes at that corner. Two of them – Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri – initially lost their lap times, only for them to be reinstated. Leclerc’s was not.

“I’m not feeling, obviously, great,” he told the official F1 channel. “It’s a difficult one to take and it’s obviously definitely not the right moment for this to happen between the engine penalty and lap time [being] deleted.

“We are not in the strongest position tomorrow, but I’ll give it all to try and turn this situation around tomorrow.”

He accepted the responsibility for the error. “Obviously, this one is on me,” he said. “It’s not been an easy weekend, but I still feel everything is possible and I’ll do my best.”

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Leclerc’s race engineer Bryan Bozzi told him his lap time had been deleted when he had no chance to make another effort. “No freaking way,” Leclerc replied. “For turn one?” “Yep, turn one,” Bozzi replied.”

His mistake meant he originally qualified 14th. He will fall to 19th on the grid, ahead of only Franco Colapinto, who qualified 19th but has a five-place grid penalty.

“Is going to be a very tough race tomorrow,” Leclerc predicted. “But everything is possible and I’ll believe in it until the very end. So we’ll do everything in order to make it a special Sunday.”