In Saturday’s sprint race, Leclerc bolted from second on the grid to lead into the first corner, while on Sunday the Monegasque not only failed to attack at the start, but dropped to fourth. at the end of the first round.
The first outing was done on a dry track and slick tyres, while the second was on wet asphalt and intermediate tyres. In the television images it could be seen that the row of cars that started behind Leclerc slipped more than those that were behind the Red Bull from pole position, but Motorsport.com helps you to know a little about the background that nobody talked about and of which Charles was a victim.
Giorgio Piola, our technical expert, was on the starting grid to photograph the F1 teams who were already prepared, when he nearly caught up with Charles Leclerc’s F1-75. The journalist was wearing rubber-soled boat shoes and was very surprised by the total lack of grip on a strip of bituminous asphalt to cover the previous starting line.
“I’m afraid Leclerc risks a bad start,” Giorgio told Motorsport.com Italy by phone, breathlessly. “Between the front and rear axles of his Ferrari there is a terribly slippery stretch of tarmac in the rain and I almost fell just walking. I can imagine what could happen to Charles because there is no grip…”.
The 2nd position on the Imola starting grid
And in fact, the first movement of the Ferrari #16 when the traffic light went out was sudden, to immediately skid later with the rear wheels that lost grip on the strip of black asphalt.
In the images that we show you, which Roberto Chinchero took after the end of the race, when the asphalt was already dry, you can clearly see the strip of track that has been treated to cover what was underneath: the telemetry data from Ferrari can confirm that Leclerc really started to skid not so much because of a bad start, but because of a different grip on the asphalt that ruined all the tests that had been done precisely to avoid this problem…
And beware, because not only Charles Leclerc suffered, but also Carlos Sainz (started 4th) and the rest of the even positions on the grid, Daniel Ricciardo (6th), Kevin Magnussen (8th), Mick Schumacher (10th), Yuki Tsunoda ( 12th), Lewis Hamilton (14th), Esteban Ocon (16th) and Alexander Albon (18th). Guanyu Zhou, last (20th), was sentenced to start from the pitlane due to a penalty late on Saturday.
This was the asphalt and the paint in the second position on the grid, that of Leclerc
