After a busy FP2 session at the F1 Spanish GP, Charles Leclerc’s ends the day P5, while his teammate Lewis Hamilton takes P11. Leclerc was half a second away from Oscar Piastri’s P1 time of 1:12.760. Overall, it was a difficult session for the Ferrari drivers.
Everyone begun the session on medium C2 tires, except for Stroll and Colapinto who opted for hard tires. With about 12 minutes left, Leclerc turned on the radio to inform his race engineer that he had “nothing to learn” from doing more long runs on the mediums, Ferrari opted to switch back to the soft C3 tires, for the rest of the session.
Not a good day for Hamilton
Despite having a good FP1 session, Lewis Hamilton had quite a demanding FP2 session. The seven-time world champion stated: “The car is not drivable, mate” on the radio, during the second half of the session following his soft tyre run.
Lewis Hamilton has historically been amazing at the Barcelona circuit. The Ferrari driver has won the Spanish GP six times, and is one of the only drivers, alongside Max Verstappen, to win here the past decade.
When asked about the session, Hamilton had a smile on his face while chuckling that it was “not fun” and “not a good day”. The seven-time World Champion appeared disappointed as he had higher expectations after the performance at the Monaco GP. “
You have a weekend in Monaco where all of a sudden the car feels great. Honestly, I thought the car was gonna be good today, but it wasn’t too bad in FP1, but then FP2 was quite a lot worse,” Hamilton expressed.
The six-time Spanish GP winner, was asked about dealing with tough days such as today while keeping the team motivated, and Hamilton answered:
“You just keep your head down, you just keep working away. You just don’t give up, you just keep going, you keep pushing. You keep trying to focus on solving the issues, which we’ll try to do.”
Charles Leclerc still optimistic
Despite Hamilton’s disappointment after a bad day, his teammate Charles Leclerc appears hopeful. “It was okay!” the Monegasque exclaims. He continues to explain that the weather was quite warm which made the grip poor. Even so, he appeared in good spirits.
“It’s not been too bad, I mean honestly it was a bit more positive than what we expected coming here, so that’s good. There is more performance in the car which I hope we’ll unlock tomorrow, come quali,” Leclerc expressed.
Ferrari have been experiencing quite the struggle with the car this season. However, they are aware that there are several areas in which they still need to improve.
“There is still quite a bit of work to be done, but I don’t think we are too far out. We’ll focus on few areas tonight, and let’s see tomorrow,” Leclerc stated.
The Monegasque appeared optimistic that the team will work on the issues. Hopefully they will be able to find more performance in the car for qualifying tomorrow.
