Ferrari’s wet weather struggles continued at the Turkish Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc had a very difficult qualifying session. 

After finishing 2nd in the wet conditions of FP3, following a strong Friday where he finished in the top 3 in both sessions, Charles Leclerc was left ruing the fact he couldn’t find the grip he needed to contend for a Q3 spot.  

So bad were his struggles, he ended up P14 in Q2, a full 1.5s adrift of his teammate and ended up over 2s off making the final segment of qualifying. Thanks to penalties for both McLaren drivers, he’ll be starting in 12th for the race.  

"The conditions were very difficult for us out there today and unfortunately, our performance was worse than expected, after a reasonably good weekend so far,’’ said Leclerc. This morning it was raining quite hard but I could feel the grip and I was confident with the car, but this afternoon it was a completely different picture. 

We just could not make the tyres work in quali, we were struggling in the rain and being so far off the pace is really not good. I’m hoping for a dry race tomorrow." 

Was feeling really good in the wet during FP3, but we couldn’t switch on the tyres in Qualifying for some reasons and it’s been a disaster. Disapointed about today but the race is tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/S84z4VrnX0

— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) November 14, 2020

Sebastian Vettel outqualified his teammate for the first time since the Hungarian Grand Prix as he finished P12 in qualifying. Norris’ penalty moves him up a spot. Despite outqualifying Leclerc by a large margin, he had difficulties with the SF1000 in the wet conditions as well.  

Vettel explained how he struggled to get heat in the tyres and that left Ferrari all at sea around Istanbul Park.  

"We were struggling just to generate heat in the tyres, and in a situation like this I think couple of degrees makes all the difference. Unfortunately we were not able to maximize our potential and I felt the Extreme Wet was our weakest compound. I’m quite sure the car was better than P12, but not in these conditions. 

‘’Tomorrow it will be interesting even starting from the midfield, because the situation with this track surface is something we haven’t seen before, apart from maybe in Austin in 2012, when the asphalt was new. Yesterday, in the dry it was very tricky but was also fun. Of course the race won’t be easy but I think there’s definitely room to improve from our starting position."