Leclerc won most of the races in Melbourne last season. He will begin the race from seventh place on the grid while Sainz will start from fifth. Ferrari chose not to add any new aerodynamic parts to their cars, unlike Mercedes and Red Bull who did so. Leclerc thinks it’s all because of his not-so-good driving as he got stuck behind Sainz too.
Leclerc said: “I didn’t do very good in Qualifying 1 and Qualifying 2. It was my fault because I wasn’t driving as well as I should have been.
“In Qualifying 3, I did better. In the car, I felt like I would be able to do a good job.
“Unfortunately something went wrong during my second run of Q3; it might have been because of some confusion between me and Carlos.”
Charles Leclerc, who is a driver on the Scuderia Ferrari team said in Parc Ferme after qualifying that he was not doing great because he had spent the first sector behind another driver. He also added that they will need to talk more about it later to try and make it better next time.
There was a short break during the session because Sergio Perez drove into the gravel and it started to rain which made us finish quickly in Q3. Charles said, “It was difficult, but we seem very competitive. I didn’t do everything right in the first Q3 run though, that’s my mistake. When you get to Q3, you need to make sure you get everything 100%.
“We could have done better if we communicated more, but I also didn’t do a great job. Leclerc said that Ferrari was in the same shape as it did in Saudi Arabia, so we should be able to keep up with Mercedes and Aston Martin during the race. He also said that our bad results were due to my mistake and there’s no need to worry.”
Leclerc said he wasn’t happy with the way he drove and that he needed to have done better. He also mentioned that his car was actually in really good condition, and they had worked on making it even better by the weekend.
Albon used his mastery of the tricky elements in F1 racing to achieve an impressive showing in Q3. Sainz admitted they had worked hard on improving their car’s setup mainly for the race, though he felt unhappy that his last lap hadn’t gone perfectly – he got stuck in traffic which made his tyres cool down too much.
