Charles Leclerc will be relying on race pace from his Ferrari after qualifying fourth for the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix amid his issues qualifying with low downforce.
As Carlos Sainz led the Ferrari charge en route to pole on Saturday, Leclerc wrestled his to fourth, finishing 0.319s back from his team-mate.
The Monegasque driver was marginally off of Sainz in the first two sectors of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, but a snap in the final corner highlighted his issues.
“[I’m] disappointed, but not surprised,” was the verdict delivered to select media including Motorsport Week post-race.
“I was struggling and not feeling well since FP2 with the car and yeah, that’s the way it is.
“In Q3 the lap was coming very, very nicely until Turn 10 where I lost the car, but I had to take those risks just because I didn’t have the pace.
“So yeah, it’s the way it is. I think P4 is not that bad, but of course disappointed.”
The Mexico City GP is famed for its low downforce nature thanks to an extremely high altitude, akin to Monaco and Monza.
Leclerc admitted that during qualifying he struggles in these conditions, but not so much in races.
“I’ve got to think a lot more in order to finish a lap and try to contain a bit more my will to push extremely hard because it just doesn’t work out on those tracks,” he explained.
“You slide a lot just because there’s very low grip,” he said.
“So you’ve just got to be a little bit less on the limit on these tracks and I struggle a bit more to do that.
“However, for the race pace it doesn’t seem to be an issue. I don’t think it will be an issue tomorrow, but in quali it’s a bit trickier.”
Charles Leclerc hoping for an unlikely Austin repeat
A week before F1 rolled into Mexico City, Leclerc swept from fourth on the grid to lead at lights out in the United States GP.
From there, Leclerc deployed Ferrari’s race pace with devastating effect to take a comfortable win.
He’s hoping for a repeat but admitted question marks linger over his rivals’ pace in race conditions.
“McLaren has gained a lot of pace compared to [Friday],” Leclerc said.
“Max [Verstappen] obviously didn’t run a lot yesterday, so it’s difficult to compare with Max.
“Actually, we don’t know about Max’s race pace, so we are quite confident that our car could have a good pace tomorrow.
“However, I think it’s a different scenario compared to Austin where it’s very easy to overtake.
“Here in Mexico, there’s a lot of overheating for the engines, for everything. Whenever you are P4 then you’ve got to manage all these things and it makes it a lot more difficult to come back.
“But we’ll try our best and if we do a good start like last week then everything is possible.”
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