The Austrian weekend starts on an uphill climb for the Monegasque driver, who will start from tenth place in tomorrow afternoon’s Sprint Race. As the cars queued to exit the pit lane with just a couple of minutes left in SQ3, Leclerc’s car unexpectedly stalled, forcing him to step aside for a few moments to restart the engine: seconds that passed proved crucial, because they did not allow him to complete the preparation round before time ran out.
The Ferrari driver, embittered by what happened, has not yet been able to give himself an explanation for what happened, waiting for a more precise response from the team: “I don’t know what happened. I was in the pit lane, the anti-stall came in and everything went off”.
“Clearly we weren’t super fast, but we definitely could have done better than tenth place. We’ll try to understand what happened and tomorrow we’ll try to do better in the Sprint.”
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
Max Verstappen, who took pole in 1’04”686, proved to be much faster than Carlos Sainz, who took fifth place, more than four tenths behind the Red Bull driver, also behind the two McLarens and George Russell’s Mercedes. The Spanish driver commented on his qualifying as follows:
“My Sprint Qualifying was quite good. I think I did well in SQ1, SQ2 and SQ3, I did three very clean laps, unfortunately. Since Free Practice, on the Softs we seemed a bit weaker than on the Mediums or the Hards and when we put the Softs on at the end we thought it was possible to finish in the top three. We are fifth but more or less like in FP1, where we were sixth or something like that on the Softs. There are things to analyse but at the moment the situation is more or less like this.”
![Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524](https://cdn.motorsport.com/images/mgl/2wBev9q0/s1000/carlos-sainz-ferrari-sf-24-lan.jpg)
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Looking at the Sprint Race, the Spaniard says he is optimistic, hoping to be able to move up the ranking, perhaps taking advantage of the clean line at the start to surprise his rivals: “I hope to be able to gain a few positions starting from fifth position, which is on the clean side of the grid. Tomorrow we will try to get as many points as possible.”
Qualifying will also take place tomorrow, which will determine the starting grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix: in this regard, Sainz said that Ferrari still have to “work a bit on setting up the car”.
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