Charles Leclerc says he was surprised to set the second fastest time in qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix as his lap didn’t feel particularly strong.
Max Verstappen was comfortably fastest in a wet qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps, but Leclerc’s final lap in Q3 earned him second in the classification, meaning he will start from pole position due to Verstappen’s 10-place grid penalty. Leclerc says he was aiming for a top five result heading into qualifying given Ferrari’s recent form, and he had not expected his lap to be good enough to beat the rest of the field.
“I’m very surprised,” Leclerc said. “Actually, even when I finished the lap, I didn’t feel like it was worth a second place. I mean, it was a good lap, a clean lap, and that’s what you need in those conditions. I believe that especially when you get to Q3 in the last lap, everybody knows that this is the lap, and that pushes people to maybe do more mistakes.
“On my side, it was a clean lap, but not an incredible lap, so I’m very happy to be P2. I definitely did not expect that. I think as a team, today, P5 would have been a bit of a good result, and today we are P2 and tomorrow we will be starting on pole. That’s a good thing, but as I said, we don’t have any magical solution for the race pace and it will be a bit of a tricky day tomorrow.”
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Leclerc was one of the few drivers to improve with their last runs in Q3, and he says tire preparation was central to that jump up the order to beat Sergio Perez to second.
“We didn’t change the balance that much from Q1 to Q3. I think where we improved quite a bit was to put the tires in the right window. That was super important, and in those conditions that’s always where you struggle.
“We did some modifications especially on the out lap and how much you push and where you push. Then I felt more at ease, and that helped me for Q3. It was all about fine tuning the out lap and putting the tires in the right window.”
While the Monegasque believes Ferrari’s race pace could be a cause for concern based on the struggles it has faced over the past four rounds, he says he’ll simply focus on trying to keep Perez at bay at the start before seeing how the long run performance pans out.
“It’s going to be a tricky race for us. It will be dry conditions, and in dry conditions, recently, we’ve been struggling a little bit more. However, the McLaren is a bit further away than what we wanted. There’s Checo right behind. That will be the main target, and then we’ll see how it goes after the first stint.
“But it’s a good starting position. It’s also a track where you can overtake quite easily, so we’ll need the pace. We’ll only have the answer tomorrow.”