Leclerc narrowly missed pole position for the second sprint race of the 2022 Formula 1 season, when hometown idol Max Verstappen snatched pole position from him in the dying seconds of qualifying.
The Monegasque driver had been provisionally in first position after his last run in a Q3 with two red flags due to the Mercedes accidents, before Verstappen surpassed him by just 29 thousandths (0.029s).
However, when asked about his mentality for the sprint race, Charles Leclerc did not specifically point to victory, but instead referred to putting a losing streak behind him.
And it is that Leclerc arrives in Austria after two engine failures while leading in Spain and Azerbaijan, and the strategic errors that cost Ferrari possible Monaco and Great Britain doubles (this last reason forced the team manager, Mattia Binotto , to try to calm the Leclerc’s frustration).
Charles Leclerc stated: “I just want to do a clean race. Obviously there have been five races where it has been a disaster for me.”
“So I just hope that everything goes clean, and that we can finally get the points that we deserve.”
Reflecting on the exciting qualifying session at the Austrian GP, Leclerc said he had missed pole due to a drop in tire temperature, a consequence of the two red flag stoppages.
He added: “I think all three of us did very well. I think all three of us are very, very close, so it’s been an exciting qualifying.”
“On the last lap it took me a while to get the tires back up to temperature after so much time in the pits.”
“But Max was a little quicker. So congratulations to him. I hope we have an exciting race tomorrow.”
His teammate, Carlos Sainz Jr., who will start third in the sprint race, also suffered tire problems during the warm-up lap, which prevented him from “confident” in the car.
He added: “When you check it and see how close it is, you go back through the lap and find spots where you missed that tenth of a second that could have given us pole.
“But I’m sure these two guys [Verstappen and Leclerc] also know more or less where they’ve lost it or where they’ve won it.”
For his part, polesitter Verstappen commented: “It was a very long wait, of course, between the two stints. That’s never good. Once you have the rhythm, it’s good to keep going.”
“There aren’t many corners. But the corners that are there are quite tricky and it’s easy to make a mistake.”
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