Charles Leclerc ended his FP2 running earlier than expected after crashing his F1-75 into the barriers of Turn 8, but is confident his weekend won't be affected.
It wasn't the easiest of days for Leclerc who started FP1 by an early puncture but then ended his days in the barriers after losing the rear of his Ferrari causing damage that couldn't be repaired within the session.
However, the Monegasque is feeling good in his car, while not being too hard on himself because of his shunt in second practice.
"To be honest, the feeling is good," said Leclerc, quoted by Formula 1's official website. "We’ve been pretty unlucky in FP1; on my side I had a puncture on the out-lap, so not many laps, but the few that I’ve done I was happy with the car.
"In FP2, [it was] the same on the short runs, then I lost the rear at the start of the high-fuel [run]," he added, "so [I had a] limited amount of laps, but that was my mistake – I’m confident it won’t hurt our weekend.
"We tried something on my car which I didn’t particularly like, so I wasn’t as much at ease with the car than I was in FP1, but I know what to do for tomorrow, so [I’m] confident that the performance will be there," Leclerc insisted.
The Ferrari ace is not concerned about any setbacks in terms of car components after his accident, and said: "I don’t think any of it will compromise us.
"I think we have enough [parts] now with all the penalties we’ve had in the past, so it should be fine," he concluded.
Carlos Sainz confident this weekend as well
Carlos Sainz had a better day in the other Ferrari, fastest in FP1, 0.046s ahead of his teammate, and is confident about his chances for the rest of the weekend, after securing pole position in the previous race in Austin.
"FP1 went well, it went to plan," he said. "Then we did quite a few car changes for FP2. We don’t know if we went in the right direction or not because of the tyre testing. But I think we’re in the right spot with car balance and I think it will be a matter of which package adapts better to the high altitude.
"We got as much as we could from today. Now FP3 will be another busy session, like it was in Austin, trying to get the last points of data to decide before quali and before the race, which I think is going to be an interesting one," Sainz added.
"There’s always a bit of a guess going into the race when you have a compromised weekend like here or Austin," the Spaniard admitted. There’s going to be a lot of guessing of where to put the car in the right place.
"But we’ve been good every time so far doing that this year and we’ve got I think a good car for Saturday and Sunday," he concluded, confident of his team's ability to get through this weekend where FP2 was allocated for Pirelli prototypes testing.
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