Leclerc:
I’m not satisfied at all—actually, I’m very disappointed overall, because when you do everything possible with the car and end up fourth, it’s just frustrating and disappointing. But that’s what the car is capable of right now. I can play with the limits, go from understeer to oversteer, but in the end, we just don’t have enough grip to go into some corners with the same speed our rivals can. We need to analyze this. I’m disappointed because we expected more from a track like this.
Today confirms we’re lacking overall potential. I’m happy on my end, because I’ve found a direction that lets me extract the most out of the car every time in qualifying. But it makes it extremely tough—if you look at my quali lap, I think I almost ended up in the wall two or three times. At the moment, I feel good in the car. I think I’ve found the car’s sweet spot that fits my driving style. I feel like over the last three qualifyings, I’ve been able to maximize the car’s potential—but that potential isn’t yet at the level I want.
Hamilton:
I’ve been nowhere all weekend. I haven’t even been able to improve much session by session, but honestly, I’m just grateful to have made it to Q3, considering the level we’re at. The last lap wasn’t spectacular, but we are making progress. We’ve been improving throughout the weekend. I should’ve done a better lap at the end, but either way, I’m grateful to be up there, to still be among the top guys. Overtaking is possible here, so tomorrow’s goal will be to fight back.
Vasseur:
You always hope to do better, but it's true that since the start of the weekend, we've been losing a lot of time in Turn 1. I think we’re about three-tenths off pole position, and we’re losing exactly three-tenths in Turn 1 alone. But that’s how it went — now we need to focus on the race and long runs. So far, we've always been stronger in race pace, even if yesterday in FP2 we didn’t get to run a race sim because of a red flag — nobody managed a full lap. But I believe anything’s possible in the race, so we’ll see.
The story is completely different from last weekend. In Bahrain, Lewis had strong pace from the get-go and just missed the final lap in Q3. This weekend, though, things have been tougher — he struggled from the start to find the right balance. And on this kind of track, surrounded by barriers, when you’re not confident in the car, it gets a lot more complicated. We’ll see in the race — he made a strong comeback last week, and I’m sure he’ll deliver another solid performance tomorrow.
Strange that Lewis is still struggling to adapt after five races? I wouldn’t say that, because it’s not really about five races. After just two Grands Prix, he was already doing a great job in China, finding the right setup and fighting for pole and the win. So it’s not a learning curve issue — it’s about balance. He needs to find the right configuration for each track, and so far that’s been tough. We managed it two or three races ago, and I’m sure we’ll get there again.
I’m disappointed because we’re not here to be three-tenths off pole, and I feel like we didn’t manage to put everything together this weekend. But the race is on Sunday, and you can overtake in Jeddah, so everything’s still on the table. It’s true though — from one weekend to the next, everything can flip completely. Verstappen won in Japan, then suffered like crazy last week in Bahrain, and now he’s back on top. Consistency’s hard to find — not just for us, but for others too, maybe except McLaren. That’s the picture right now, and that’s how these last few weekends have played out.
