Charles Leclerc sets qualifying goal for French GP

Charles Leclerc

Leclerc sets qualifying goal for French GP

Saturdays have let him down this year.

Matthew Scott

Friday 21 June 2019 08:09

Charles Leclerc has pinpointed an improvement in qualifying as he looks to get back on track at the French Grand Prix. Leclerc has only qualified ahead of Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel once so far in 2019, when he took pole position at the Bahrain GP.

Sakhir is also the only race in which Leclerc has finished ahead of Vettel and the Monegasque is fifth in the drivers' championship, behind Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

A crash in Azerbaijan and Ferrari's strategy blunder in Monaco represent Leclerc's most major Saturday missteps, while his performance through the segments of qualifying in Montreal steadily deteriorated.

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"In qualifying, I did some mistakes," Leclerc said of the Canada weekend. "To put everything together in qualifying is my main target at the moment.

"During the race, the performance was strong on my side so I was very happy with it. In qualifying, unfortunately, I did some mistakes and I think we were quite lucky to start from third position.

"I think I need to learn from this, try to get better and then the results will come together."

Ferrari will trial a modified front-wing design in Le Castellet, but Leclerc does not expect it to dramatically change the SF90's performance.

"I think it will help in different parts of the corner," he said. "We don't expect significant change for this track, but we should see some results and hopefully it will be better.

"But I don't think we are expecting big improvements for this track particularly."