Leclerc searching for answers after “tricky” F1 FP2 at Spa ends in the barriers

Leclerc ended second practice well down the order in 18th after crashing midway through the session.

He suffered a snap of oversteer on the exit of Les Combes at the start of the second sector, sending him into the barriers and causing the first red flag of FP2.

Ferrari isn’t expected to go well at Spa due to its deficiencies in a straight line, although it has an engine upgrade on the way for future races.

Reflecting on his crash, Leclerc said: “It’s been very tricky day overall I think for everyone because of the conditions, but yes, we have one night to work on the car, to come back stronger tomorrow – obviously, I would have preferred to not end the day in the wall today but it’s part of free practice and I’ll try not to re-do this mistake, these mistakes, later on.”

The Monegasque remains confident of rectifying the issues ahead of qualifying on Saturday.

“It felt quite good,” Leclerc added. “But P2 didn’t feel great so we need to understand because we didn’t change much on the car so there’s definitely plenty to understand and hopefully we’ll do a good enough job but I am, yes, I am confident that we will be able to do a good enough job to understand what went wrong in FP2 to be better tomorrow.

“I think it’s going to be like this for the rest of the weekend so we just need to be adapting ourselves as quickly as possible to try and have a set-up that is going good as well on the dry than on the rain and once we achieve that then after, we are ready for a good weekend.”