During qualifying at Nurburgring on Saturday, Charles Leclerc wrestled the unwieldy Ferrari SF1000 to fourth place on the grid for the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, Round 11 of the 2020 Formula 1 World Championship.
In comparison, teammate Sebastian Vettel failed to make it beyond Q2, his best effort of 1.26:738 seven-tenths of a second shy of #16 car at the end of the day.
It was a mighty effort by Charles and the result a surprise even for the driver, “This qualifying result is possibly better than we expected, especially in these cold conditions but we brought some updates here which, maybe, made a small difference in the right direction which is nice to see.
“I am happy about the way we are working and how things went today. I quite liked the fact we had just one FP session and went straight into qualifying.
“We made the most of the situation, even if we don’t have much information about the long runs with high fuel. Especially in Q3 there was quite a strong wind, which made the car unpredictable.
“For tomorrow, we are all a bit in unknown territory, but one thing I know is that it’ll be important to manage these soft tyres because they are pretty difficult in terms of graining. It’s going to be a tricky race but that’s what makes this weekend interesting,” predicted the 22-year-old from Monaco.
Sporting boss Laurent Mekies added, “This was our best qualifying since the mid-point of the season, not just in terms of the result, but also because of the overall performance.
“Charles did a fantastic job: he was soon at ease with the track and got consistently quicker, ending up equalling his best Saturday performance of the season, getting everything out of his SF1000.”