[gmsabu]
Charles Leclerc says it’s unlikely Ferrari will use one of its cars just to give the other a slipstream in qualifying tomorrow.
But despite topping both of today’s sessions he believes Mercedes’ true pace was disguised on Friday and expects a strong challenge from them for pole position.
“It’s a good day of course, first and first,” said Leclerc. “But I believe that it looks better on paper than it actually is.
“I think Mercedes are very, very strong. In FP2 they didn’t have the chance to do the lap time when the conditions were at their best. And they did a very strong lap time when it was raining a bit. So I expect them to be very strong tomorrow.”
Leclerc only moved to the top of the times at the end of first practice when the track dried out. “I think it was a bit of a surprise not to be on top of FP1 because obviously it was depending on when you were going out,” he said. “But we were very competitive all session long, especially with the intermediates on tricky conditions, so that was good to see.”
Having scored his first race victory at Spa last week, Leclerc isn’t sure the team will be as competitive this weekend.
“I think the race pace we are not as fast as we were at Spa. On the qualifying pace we are a bit slower than where we were in Spa so we need to understand and try to do a good job tomorrow.”
However he does not believe that will involve having one car ‘tow’ the other around the track.
“I need to speak with the team what’s going to happen but I don’t think we will sacrifice any car for the good of the other. I believe we will try to do the best team job possible and then we will see what happens.”
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Phylyp (@phylyp)
6th September 2019, 19:26
What is the current weather forecast around qualifying? Dry, or still wet?
hobo (@hobo)
6th September 2019, 19:32
@phylyp – Currently looks like low 20s both days (Sat/Sun) around qualy/race time. Practically no chance of rain for qualy, and chance of rain for race.
Link here.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
6th September 2019, 19:48
@hobo – thank you for the summary and the link.
Ah, so we might see at least one Ferrari qualify on the front row, only for them to struggle once the rains start during the race. Leclerc’s not exactly impressed in the rain, and if he’s got the rain master* Hamilton behind him, that’ll be fun.
* Yeah, yeah, something something Germany 2019 something something. He’s probably not going to make another driver error in the rain for the next 5 years.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
7th September 2019, 1:56
It’s a merc kind of thing, though we only asj this to Ferrari. Ferrari has austria 2002 ptsd, and have made some dumb decisions since. Everyone is heavy on team orders, merc has been over the top, even with Nico there was some level of team preference. With Bottas it has been a mainstay.