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F1 | São Paulo GP | Charles Leclerc on “struggling on the mediums” during the Sprint Qualifying

The Monegasque hopes that the bad feeling he had today with his front tyres will be gone by tomorrow’s start time, adding that it might be originated by a lower than expected track temperature.

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F1 | São Paulo GP | Charles Leclerc on “struggling on the mediums” during the Sprint Qualifying
Fuente imagen: Scuderia Ferrari on Twitter

The Ferrari driver wasn't pleased with his Sprint Qualifying performance, as, after qualifying in P6 due to Lewis Hamilton's disqualification, Leclerc didn't manage to hold on to his starting position and was passed by McLaren's Lando Norris, leaving him in P7.

It was still a good session for the Scuderia, especially considering their battle against the English team for third place in the constructors's championship, with Carlos Sainz finishing in P3 and scoring a point to increase the advantage on McLaren to 14,5 points.

Leclerc, in his post-sprint session interview, explained that he had tyres issues, which didn't help him to defend the position, and he hopes that will be solved before tomorrow:

“I struggled quite a bit on the medium. I struggled to make the front tyres work. I had quite a bit of understeer, a little bit of graining. We need to understand what I can do better and what we can do better as a team tomorrow to not have these options.”

He added that the track temperature was lower than forecasted, insinuating that it might have favoured his tyre damage, but that, luckily, it's supposed to be higher during tomorrow's race:

“The temperature will be quite a bit different tomorrow. It was a standout today, the cooler it was getting, the more struggle I had with the front tyre.”

The Monegasque is surprised that the tyres didn't perform as well as they did in the earlier practice session, where both drivers on the medium compound had focused on race pace, snatching a top ten, and also said that, while the softs might be helpful at the beginning of the race, the mediums should perform better in the long run:

"We still have some work to do ahead of the race to understand why we could not reproduce the good pace that we had on the Mediums this morning. The Softs may have been a small advantage at the start, but we expected the Mediums to be better later on," he said.

However, Leclerc is already focused on the race, where he hopes to avoid today's eccessive graining issues and to gain good points for the championship by completing as many overtakes as he can:

"Unfortunately, the temperatures dropped at one point and we started struggling, especially with the fronts. The race is tomorrow though, so our full focus is on that and we will work out where we can improve to fight our way up the order," he concluded.

 

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