Leclerc brushes off Spa crash as "part of practice"

Ewan Gale
Friday 27 August 2021 18:30

Charles Leclerc brushed off his crash ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix as being "all part of free practice".

The Ferrari driver was pushing hard with over 15 minutes of the session remaining when he had a snap of oversteer on the exit of Les Combes.

It resulted in Leclerc bouncing over a kerb onto the grass and into a tyre barrier at Malmedy, damaging the left-hand side of his SF21.

Reflecting on Friday's running, Leclerc conceded: "It has been a very tricky day overall, I think for everyone because of the conditions.

"But we have one night to work on the car, to come back stronger tomorrow.

"Obviously, I would have preferred to not end the day in the wall. But it is all part of free practice and I will try not to redo this mistake later on."

Plenty for Ferrari to understand ahead of qualifying

Leclerc finished fourth quickest in FP1, with team-mate Carlos Sainz following in fifth, but the Monégasque was only 18th in the second session and was left confused by his struggles in the afternoon running.

"It felt quite good [in FP1] but in P2 it didn't feel great so we need to understand because we didn't change much on the car," added Leclerc.

"So there is plenty to understand and hopefully, we will do a good enough job but I am confident we can do that to understand what went wrong in FP2 to be better tomorrow."