Leclerc's FP2 crash damage not as bad as first feared

Charles Leclerc thought his crash in FP2 at the Hungarian Grand Prix was going to lead to much bigger damage than he suffered, even though it was enough to cut his day short.

The Monegasque driver lost control on the exit curb at the high-speed Turn 4 left-hander, spinning across the track and hitting the barrier with the left rear corner and then front left. The session was stopped for over 15 minutes while barrier repairs were carried out, but Leclerc believes he escaped with relatively minor damage to his car given the speed of the incident.

“Well when I lost it I thought the damage would be much bigger, so the damage is not that big, but obviously it’s enough for us to not continue the session and that’s never what you want,” Leclerc said. “What happened is I ran a bit wide on the curb, I got a snap in the middle of Turn 4, got a bit wide and then lost the car on the curb.

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“So it was my mistake, but now it’s all about bouncing back tomorrow. Until now the car was pretty good, the feeling is getting a little bit better. We had more of a consistent day compared to the last three or four weekends, so that’s positive. Unfortunately with the mistake the mileage was cut short, but hopefully we’ll recover that in FP3 tomorrow.”

Ferrari has brought an updated floor to Hungary to try and solve recent problems with bouncing, and Leclerc believes progress has been made but warns it would be premature to suggest the issues is definitely fixed.

“I wouldn’t get carried away too quickly, but the feeling is good. I think we are still quite a bit behind McLaren – McLaren seems to be super-strong this weekend – however as I said, the feeling is good, and that’s always a good sign. Now we have to put everything together tomorrow and I hope we’ll do that.”

Teammate Carlos Sainz topped the first practice session and was third in FP2, and says analysis will now take place to see if the new parts are the cause of the one-lap pace, or if there are other factors.

“We had a better day than what we’ve had the last three weekends,” Sainz said. “We’re still yet to understand whether it’s the upgrades delivering a little bit better like we were trying to do, or maybe a bit of track characteristics involved which are maybe suiting our car a bit better, but we seem to be a bit more competitive.

“When you look a bit more in detail in the long runs you can see that we’re still not exactly the fastest out there and there’s still Red Bull and McLaren a clear step ahead, but at least over one lap we seem to be a bit more in the ballpark.”