Italian GP | Leclerc on qualifying last lap: I don't think I could have done much more
Charles Leclerc took pole position in Monza but there were controversy inside Ferrari for what happened during Q3, as the Monegasque didn't help his teammate.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc will start tomorrow the Italian Grand Prix from pole position, but the Maranello-based squad could have locked out the front row for the race. The 21 years old spoke about the strategy and what eventually went wrong during the last few minutes of the third qualifying: "To be completely honest the plan was that in the first run Seb was giving me the tow, and in the second run I would give him the tow. So I actually went out of the box in front of him, and then there was a huge mess after turn 1 and 2", Leclerc said.
"The McLaren and Renault, I don’t know whoever that was, they stopped in the middle of the car and we had nowhere to go", he added. "Seb overtook me there, we were aware that we was quite tight on time, and then I stayed basically behind Seb until the last straight where I heard also on the radio “you can overtake Seb”, so I was too keen but I had no time for me either to start the lap. What a shame, but I don’t think I could have done much more."
Definitely a crazy #Quali.
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) September 7, 2019
Grazie #Tifosi per il supporto 🙌🏼#essereFerrari 🔴 #ItalianGP 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/UKFylq1J2v
Leclerc was then asked about what would he change for situations like this one, which is clearly not good to see on a sporting side. "I mean, I think it’s only a few tracks during the season where we have this issue. I’ve got no quick fix to try and help this quickly. But maybe we can all think about it to try and understand. But it has always been like this, I think slipstream has always be that way. I don’t know what to say, I think we just need to analyze a bit more this situation. I think today it was special, it was definitely not intentional from our side, obviously. There was also Seb that was capable of having the pole position and we obviously don’t want to sacrifice one car for the pole of the other. It was quite tricky, I definitely think that situation like after the second corner shouldn’t happen, when there are two cars side by side I cannot go 20 kph. We couldn’t pass and I think most of the drivers behind wanted to pass but didn’t have the opportunity. These situations have made a big mess towards the end, and that’s why so many cars didn’t made it to start their laps."
Leclerc was also asked about the chance of any driver getting penalties after what happened. His thoughts are actually clear about it: "Today actually is quite difficult. If you put a penalty to one, you put the penalty to the ten drivers that were in Q3 because we were all together."
