It was a mixed day for the Italian team under the rainy clouds of Imola. Championship leader Charles Leclerc will start tomorrow's Sprint Race from P2 as he wasn't unable to improve Max Verstappen's 1'27.999s pole time after Magnussen and Norris's crashes.

The Monegasque driver isn't pleased with his final result, in spite of achieving the fourth front row start in four 2022 races so far:

"First of all, it's beautiful to see so much red on the stands, but today I'm disappointed because I decided during the second lap to save the tyres for the end of the session, but then there was the red flag, and then it ended," said Leclerc in the post-qualifying interview.

He reckons it would have been better to go all in immediately considering that, when the session restarted for three minutes, was interrupted shortly after and cut off.

"It's my fault, but it happened due to things that were out of my control. It would have been nice to be on pole today, but second it's what we have. It's a long weekend, and we'll try to put everything together tomorrow and on Sunday."

During today's session the record for most red flags in qualifying was broken, as five times racing was stopped due to crashes in the first wet day completed using the new machinery.

"It was very tricky, especially on the slicks there were quite a lot of wet patches, so it was all about putting the laps in and waiting for Q3 to put everything together, but again, this is why it's even more frustrating for me, because when it counted in Q3 I made the wrong choice."

"But at the end P2 is not a disaster, everything to play for tomorrow and after tomorrow, and we'll give everything," he concluded hopefully.

P2 and P10 for tomorrow’s #F1 Sprint.

We’ll keep pushing into the weekend 💪#essereFerrari 🔴 #ImolaGP pic.twitter.com/QG4nkEQCF9

— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 22, 2022

However, it wasn't an ideal day for his teammate Carlos Sainz whose new deal was confirmed yesterday. The Spaniard crashed into the barriers at Rivazza 2 while completing his second push lap after ending Q1 in P3.

Sainz feels "very frustrated": "The target was to put a banker lap in knowing that the rain was going to come, and honestly I knew I was P1, P2 the whole session and I wasn’t pushing really that hard at all, but the car surprised me in that corner."

It's a second disappointing qualifying in a row for the former McLaren driver. He had started in P9 at Melbourne, but went on to retire after spinning out in the second lap.

"Maybe it was starting to rain, maybe it was tyres too hot after doing two consecutive push laps. I don’t know, I need to understand it because it’s not a mistake that…"

"I don’t think I was exposing myself to a mistake pushing like that,” he added.

The Ferrari driver agrees with his teammate on the difficulty of today's track conditions encountered today in Imola, and wants to completely understand what went wrong today.

"It was not a lap that was properly on the limit at all, it was a lap that was okay just to put a banker in without putting it on the limit, and unfortunately I lost it, the car, for some reason."

"I didn’t have any warning that I was going to lose it and it just went. Tricky conditions for sure but not ideal. At least thinking positively, I will have Sprint quali and the race to recover."

Sainz is grateful for the new format, which he hopes it'll help him to move further up the grid in time for the race on Sunday.

"As a target, [I want] to move forward, try and rescue some solid points. The weekend is not over yet, it’s only Friday so there’s plenty of time."

"But obviously it hurts because it should have been an easily through to Q3 and in the wet, you never know what can happen," he concluded.