Leclerc Bemoans Recent Poor Qualifying Results That Cost Him Race Position

Tuesday, 09 April 2024 at 00:00

Charles Leclerc knows that his qualifying results could have been much better recently, and he discussed that after the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix.

The Monegasque driver is known as one of the fastest drivers in F1 when it comes to one-lap pace, so it shouldn't come as surprise that very often in recent years, he has started from the front row.

In his still very young career, he has 23 pole positions, compared to only five race wins, showing that his pace is really strong in the qualifying. For example, Max Verstappen won 57 races, most recently in Japan, while starting from the pole position only 36 times.

Comparing Leclerc's pole positions to Verstappen's, if he would be able to win at the same rate as the Dutch driver, he would now have 37 race wins, but the fact that he has only five shows two main things.

One is the aforementioned one-lap speed, but also the fact that his Ferrari has been stronger in the qualifying in recent years, compared to its performance in the race pace.

However, the team from Maranello tried to change that in 2024, and they seemingly succeeded, but maybe as a result of that, Leclerc has been struggling to qualify as high as he used to, and he reflected on that after the race at the Suzuka Circuit, when talking to Sky F1.

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"I think as a driver you always have to do a step back and look at the weekend as a whole. There’s one thing that we could have done better, which is the way we are preparing the tyres for the qualifying lap, because as I said yesterday, I was happy with the lap, but I just didn’t have enough grip available. And this is mostly coming from the lap before trying to get the tyres in the right window."

The Ferrari driver knows that when starting from the fourth row, his chances of winning are much thinner, but also, he is in a much greater risk of a lap-one incident.

"And from that moment that puts us in a very difficult situation for the rest of the weekend, because starting P8, you cannot do much more. We did an amazing strategy, amazing tyre management, amazing pace, but it’s just not enough when you’re starting P8."

Therefore, after the recent bad results in the qualifying, Leclerc wants to focus on this part of the weekend to give himself a better chance to challenge for the podiums in races.

"It’s not very often in my career that I had to focus on qualifying pace because it’s normally one of my strengths, but Australia and here, this is where I’ve been struggling, so I will focus on that. But normally when I work on something, I get better quite quickly, so I’m confident I’ll make improvements quickly."