Charles Leclerc says he was surprised to set the second fastest time in qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix as his lap didn’t feel particularly strong.
Max Verstappen was comfortably fastest in a wet qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps, but Leclerc’s final lap in Q3 earned him second in the classification, meaning he will start from pole position due to Verstappen’s 10-place grid penalty. Leclerc says he was aiming for a top five result heading into qualifying given Ferrari’s recent form, and he had not expected his lap to be good enough to beat the rest of the field.
“I’m very surprised,” Leclerc said. “Actually, even when I finished the lap, I didn’t feel like it was worth a second place. I mean, it was a good lap, a clean lap, and that’s what you need in those conditions. I believe that especially when you get to Q3 in the last lap, everybody knows that this is the lap, and that pushes people to maybe do more mistakes.
“On my side, it was a clean lap, but not an incredible lap, so I’m very happy to be P2. I definitely did not expect that. I think as a team, today, P5 would have been a bit of a good result, and today we are P2 and tomorrow we will be starting on pole. That’s a good thing, but as I said, we don’t have any magical solution for the race pace and it will be a bit of a tricky day tomorrow.”
Leclerc was one of the few drivers to improve with their last runs in Q3, and he says tire preparation was central to that jump up the order to beat Sergio Perez to second.