A frustrated Charles Leclerc vented his anger at his own mistake during qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix, as he wound up fourth overall.
Leclerc, who claimed his maiden pole position in Bahrain, was edged by Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel by a slender 0.017s as Q3 came to a close.
A post-session radio message revealed Leclerc’s angst as he commented on the slow-down lap “ah f*** I did mistakes, come on Charles… f***ing stupid, f***ing stupid” adding it was “not good enough from my side.”
Leclerc believed the biggest time loss came through the opening corners of the third sector, which lead onto the back straight.
“I am annoyed with myself today,” he said after the session.
“I made a mistake on the last lap and I really shouldn’t have done that.
“In all three practice sessions I was struggling quite a lot with the setup, the confidence in the car and the driving.
“But then, before qualifying we introduced some changes, which meant I could drive better and set the lap times we were expecting.
“It was good but it is also disappointing not to extract all the potential from the car today.”
Leclerc added that he is “a bit in the dark” due to missing out on his race simulation during Friday practice while Ferrari investigated a potential coolant leak from his SF90.
“We knew our rivals would be competitive as they have been since the first session,” he commented.
“The race tomorrow is going to be a bit more complicated than expected, as I haven’t done any long runs yesterday nor this morning because of the red flag so, I will be a bit in the dark.
“It will be tough but I’ll push as much as possible and we can expect our opponents to be very strong.”
