Charles Leclerc – Photo Federico Basile/IPA
A Friday to forget for Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. During the sprint qualification of the Austrian Grand Prix, eleventh round of the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship, the Monegasque driver’s SF-24 stopped in the pit lane, thus preventing Leclerc from recording a time in SQ3 and therefore tomorrow, in the sprint, he will start from tenth position while his teammateCarlos Sainz, she will take fifth.
THE STARTING GRID OF THE SPRINT
WHAT HAPPENED TO CHARLES LECLERC?
We are in SQ3 and there are two minutes left of sprint qualifying. All the cars are getting ready to exit the pit lane to set the time that will define the first five rows of tomorrow’s sprint. All the cars are required to use soft tyres. Everyone exits at the same time and so a long queue forms in the pits: Charles Leclerc is ninth in this queue, therefore the second to last, with only Pierre Gasly behind him. At a certain point the anti-stall is activated and the car switches off completely. Leclerc has to let Gasly pass and, only manually, manages to restart the car. Except that, in doing so, the seconds pass and the Monegasque does not have time to finish his lap out and consequently takes the checkered flag, unleashing all his disappointment. The reasons why the car switched off, despite the anti-stall being activated – which in theory serves precisely to prevent the engine from switching off – have not yet been made known.
THE RADIO TEAM
Leclerc tried to ask his engineer Bryan Bozzi about what happened: “What the hell happened guys?”. “The anti-stall went off,” Bozzi replied. “Good, thanks, but the engine shouldn’t shut off,” Leclerc observed. “We’ll talk about it when you get back to the pits,” Bozzi concluded.
THE STATEMENTS
“I don’t know what happened, I just know that everything shut down. I’ll talk to the team later, we weren’t strong, but I could have done better than 10th place for sure.”.
