BARCELONA, Spain -- Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc said he felt “very ashamed” about crashing out of qualifying at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, which he refused to blame on recent brake changes.
Leclerc switched brake disc supplier ahead of Sunday’s race after crashing out of his home Monaco Grand Prix last weekend.
On the back of that, he opted to copy teammate Lewis Hamilton’s move from Brembo to Carbon Industrie material, made at the Japanese Grand Prix earlier in the year and something the seven-time world champion has credited with helping his recent impressive form.
On his first Q3 run on Saturday, Leclerc lost control of the car coming through Turn 4, snapping to the right and then over-correcting to the left before going across the gravel and into the wall.
Hamilton managed to qualify between the Mercedes drivers in second position -- Leclerc will start 10th.
Unlike in Monaco, Leclerc said the crash was all on him, not the brakes.
“I tried to carry more speed in [through the corner], worked out, but then I went on traction on the outside of the track, and lost the rear, but there was not much to excuse myself,” Leclerc said.
He suggested the change had been a positive step forward until his crash.
When asked in the written media pen if it was down to the recent brake change, he said: “No, no, there’s none of that, and honestly, I adapted very well straight from [practice]. I felt very at ease with it, and there’s nothing wrong, there’s no excuses on trying to find the reference or whatsoever.
“I feel very ashamed, after the last three weekends that have been particularly difficult for me to find pace for issues that I had. And today, and this weekend, I think everything felt really, really good in these days. I needed to deliver, and I didn’t, so I felt very ashamed in general.”
Ferrari’s hopes of ending Mercedes’ clean sweep of races so far this season might well lie with Hamilton, who clinched his first front row grand prix start for the team.
Hamilton suggested Leclerc had tried to copy his line through the corner and explained how difficult it was to thread the needle in terms in qualifying.
“Charles has been quick all weekend,” Hamilton said. “I think on the data, I was braking very late into Turn 4, which had been visible. And I think Charles probably tried to carry a lot of speed into that corner. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for him. But he’s still going to be really quick in the race. I think from the car standpoint, we’re just constantly trying to strike that perfect balance, which is inevitably almost impossible to ever find.
“But you’re trying to get closer and closer. And these tires are very, very peaky. There’s a small, small window that the fronts and the rears work.
“You overpush in Turn 1, 2, and 3, and then you’re struggling through [Turn] 4 and the rest of the lap. It’s the finest line that I can remember there ever being to get every ounce of the car’s performance out on track. But I’ve been really happy with the progress that we’ve made in terms of balance.”
Ferrari has not won an F1 race since Carlos Sainz did so at the Mexico City Grand Prix in October 2024, a week after Leclerc won that year’s U.S. Grand Prix in Austin.
