Charles Leclerc has no interest in toning down his risky approach despite crashing out of Miami Grand Prix qualifying.
The Monegasque caused Q3 to be ended early after losing control over the inside kerb through the high-speed Turn 6 and spinning into the barriers.
Leclerc’s crash was the second time in 24 hours that he had gone off in that area of the track after sliding off a few metres later at Turn 7 during Friday practice.
But Charles denied he was pushing too hard in a forlorn attempt to keep up with the Red Bulls.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I obviously need to – in these weekends especially – just manage it differently in Q3.
A head-spinning twist at the climax of qualifying ?#MiamiGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/bC4jZy1qOe
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“In the end, it’s like this. You can always find excuses in those situations — the wind was really strong, it was really tricky, the setup of the car was really tricky also.
“I put myself in a difficult situation because I wanted a very aggressive setup for qualifying, knowing that this was the setup I would need to extract the most out of the car.
“I probably did a step too far, and this is something I’ll look at after the weekend.”
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Leclerc’s single-lap performance is known as one of his biggest strengths, as highlighted by his 19 poles in F1.
And the Ferrari driver doubled down on his risky approach as an important factor in achieving his speed.
“I’m very hard on myself. But I also know what are my strong points and what it gives me on the other side, taking this much risk”, he said.
“I know that I am taking more risks than others probably in Q3 and that’s why most of the time I’m doing good Q3s but this is too much.
“I’m very disappointed with myself. I did the same mistake yesterday and this shouldn’t happen.
“It’s just very disappointing. Then looking forward to tomorrow, I’m pretty sure I’ll recover and reset. On that, I’m not worried.”
Leclerc will line up P7 on the grid in Miami for Sunday’s race and he singled out his main competition around him.
“The Aston Martin looks strong with their race pace so I don’t know exactly where we are going to be,” he said, with Fernando Alonso starting second.
“But a podium will be a really good finish tomorrow considering our race pace.”