Charles Leclerc believes there was “definitely something” wrong with his Sauber C37 after he was knocked out in the first stage of qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix.
Leclerc was ninth-quickest in both the second and third practice sessions, as he and Sauber bounced back from the DRS design flaw that required a fix, in the wake of Marcus Ericsson’s hefty crash.
The bulk of the field was closely-matched in and Leclerc wound up at the wrong end of the field, qualifying 17th, albeit just 0.002s slower than Romain Grosjean in Q1, who made it through.
“One thing is for sure I had absolutely nobody in front of me for any slipstreams,” said Leclerc.
“But again that doesn’t justify our lack of performance today. For now we still need to analyse obviously, still quite fresh, we need to analyse what was wrong. There was definitely something.
“Because Monza should be a track where we are strong. Like in FP2 and FP3, so to see us out in Q1… after in my opinion a very good lap because I was very happy about my lap.
“I think you saw a mistake from my side on TV but that was on my second push lap when anyway the tyres were gone so that didn’t really affect my performance.
“The first lap was very good. Just a shame to be out in Q1.
“We are the slowest car on the straight, which is not normal, because we are normally one of the quickest.
“We still need to do some analyse as we believe there is something wrong.”
Leclerc will nonetheless move up to 15th on the grid owing to engine penalties for Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo.
