Leclerc: An “incredible” result after the worst Friday of the year

The performance is all the more remarkable as the Saubers only literally set fire during the opening day with the fiery mishap experienced by Marcus Ericsson in Free Practice 1.

« We had the most complicated Friday since the start of the year, it was really very difficult with the car, but we managed to put everything back in order, declared Leclerc with a smile in front of a large French-speaking press who came to the Sauber motorhome on Saturday evening.

This first Q3 is truly incredible. I had a huge smile when I saw that we were entering, I even kept this smile when I was driving during Q3, which is not normal... Now we have to concentrate on Sunday to try to have a good race but also enjoy the moment because it's not every weekend that we manage to recover so much performance from one day to another.

If you had asked me on Friday evening, I would have said that Q2 was not realistic but we worked a lot during the night and the engineers understood what I wanted from the car for qualifying ».

Joy reigned in the Swiss clan whose pit wall received a few friendly pats from a demonstrative Frédéric Vasseur as they celebrated Sauber's first Q3 since the 2015 Austrian Grand Prix with Felipe Nasr.

« It's a good time, we do this for that too, confided the Frenchman with eyes that sparkled in the evening. If we're not happy there, we never will be. It's been progressing for a while and we've had this in our sights for two or three races.

Besides that, we had a slightly complicated Friday with Marcus not driving in FP2. With Charles, we were a little nowhere. Beyond the performance, I'm happy with the reaction and the great job of the team to make up for it on the track ».