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Charles Leclerc was not too positive after the first day of running in the 2023 F1 Monaco GP.
The Ferrari did not have the best of days overall as he struggled to keep up with his teammate. A driver like Charles Leclerc who tends to have a few tenths as buffer against his teammate found himself playing catch-up all day.
In all of this though, Leclerc ended the FP2 session P2 on the timesheets only marginally faster than Carlos Sainz and marginally slower than Max Verstappen. Looking back at how the day panned out, Charles Leclerc admitted that the car was not in the best of shapes and was not exactly doing what it needed to. He told the media:
"It was a bit of a difficult day as the car is not doing exactly what it is supposed to do. So we need to take a good look at the set-up on my car and then work on it to ensure I have the right feeling with it tomorrow. Here it’s all about qualifying, so we didn’t do any race runs, just focusing on preparing for qualifying in the best way possible."
"The day was positive" - Charles Leclerc's teammate Carlos Sainz
Charles Leclerc's teammate Carlos Sainz however disagrees. According to the Spaniard, the car was in the right window and the car was fast in both sessions.
Sainz did suffer a bad crash in FP2 and that brought out the red flag but other than that the Spaniard was very impressive. In the eyes of many, he was arguably the quicker of the two Ferrari drivers as well on occasion.
Looking back at the first day of running, Sainz said:
"In general, I think the day was positive. We were fast in both sessions and the car feels okay on track. There are still a couple of things I want to try tomorrow on the set-up to try and improve, but overall we are quite competitive."
"Obviously, it was not ideal to finish the session in that way, after a small miscalculation trying to find the limit. Sorry to the team and the mechanics for the extra work."
Sainz had an impressive stint at the top of the timesheets for the most part in FP1 and a competitive placing in FP2. While the 2023 F1 Monaco GP is Leclerc's home race, the Spaniard has been the more successful driver of the two and his true performance might be good enough for a pole position.
