Leclerc alarmed by deficit to Norris in Styria F1 qualifying

Leclerc trailed Norris by over three-tenths in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, with the Ferrari driver set to start the race from seventh on the grid.

After a disappointing race last time out at the Circuit Paul Ricard, the Italian manufacturer now sits 16 points behind McLaren in the race for third in the constructors’ championship.

Assessing his performance in qualifying, Leclerc was happy with his own performance but was concerned by the daunting gap to Norris in Q3.

“I’m happy about my lap, actually very happy with my lap, I put everything together, I did a very good lap, didn’t make any mistakes, got all my best corners in one lap but, on the other hand, when I look at the gap between Lando and myself, it’s quite… I won’t go as far as scary, but it’s quite a bit,” Leclerc said.

“We need to work hard for tomorrow – actually I think our race pace was better than our qualifying pace this weekend, which is quite unusual, but sometimes we haven’t been able to carry on the speed shown on Friday into the race on Sunday, so we need to make sure we work well tonight, try to prepare in the best possible way for tomorrow and have a good race.”

Leclerc believes Ferrari’s deficit is coming when it is using DRS, losing out on the straights.

“I think to be honest, we are losing quite a bit in the first sector, which are mainly the three DRS zones, for some reason, we don’t completely understand yet why, because that’s where we are mostly opening the DRS and the others seem to be a lot stronger with the DRS on,” he explained.

“So, it’s not in all the straights, it’s mostly on those three straights and then overall grip, probably a little bit. But we are not that bad in the corners, actually, if you compare with the others.”

Carlos Sainz didn’t fare any better with the Spaniard set to start from 12th on the grid.

“I think it’s pretty clear that this circuit is just not suiting us very well,” Sainz added. “We’ve been fighting to get through Q3 and fighting to get into the top ten in every practice session.

“You can see that the lap time isn’t coming as easy as Paul Ricard, also the feeling with the car is not as good as it was there. Over one lap, we are struggling a bit to unlock the one-lap pace but hopefully, we can repair that trend and be stronger in the race tomorrow.”