Charles Leclerc admits he and Ferrari have “plenty to understand” after his crash during Friday practice at the Belgian Grand Prix.
After a solid morning, the Monegasque was only 18th in the second session at Spa-Francorchamps as he went off into the barrier on the entry to Malmedy after losing the rear exiting Les Combes on his soft tyre run.
With conditions much cooler than in recent years in the Ardennes and rain dampening the circuit at times throughout the day, Leclerc admits running wasn’t easy.
“It’s been a very tricky day overall I think for everyone because of the conditions,” he said upon returning to the paddock.
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“We have one night to work on the car, to come back stronger tomorrow – obviously, I would have preferred to not end the day in the wall today but it’s part of free practice and I’ll try not to re-do this mistake, these mistakes, later on.”
What baffled Leclerc more was how the performance of his Ferrari altered in the second practice despite keeping much of the same setup as in the first.
“It felt quite good initially,” he added. “But P2 didn’t feel great so we need to understand because we didn’t change much on the car so there’s definitely plenty to understand.
Charles Leclerc collides with the barriers during FP2 ?#BelgianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/pr178vQqFi
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 27, 2021
“Hopefully we’ll do a good enough job but I am, yes, I am confident that we will be able to do a good enough job to understand what went wrong in FP2 to be better tomorrow.
“I think it (the weather) is going to be like this for the rest of the weekend so we just need to be adapting ourselves as quickly as possible to try and have a set-up that is going good as well in the dry then in the rain and once we achieve that then after, we are ready for a good weekend.”
Carlos Sainz was only P11 in the second Ferrari, as the Scuderia have a battle on their hands in the midfield group.