{"id":104858,"date":"2025-08-29T18:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T18:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/104858\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T18:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T18:24:08","slug":"charles-leclerc-seeks-miracle-to-recover-worst-friday-of-the-season-at-the-dutch-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/104858\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc seeks &#8216;miracle&#8217; to recover &#8216;worst Friday of the season&#8217; at the Dutch Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">Charles Leclerc conceded the opening day of the Dutch Grand Prix weekend was \u201cprobably the worst Friday of the season\u201d after ending up almost a second shy of the pace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">After taking a surprise pole position last time out in Hungary, <a class=\"text-brand-hot-red underline decoration-1 hover:decoration-[3px]\" href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/drivers\/charles-leclerc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Leclerc<\/a> struggled for pace at Zandvoort, setting the eighth fastest time in Free Practice 2 for <a class=\"text-brand-hot-red underline decoration-1 hover:decoration-[3px]\" href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/teams\/ferrari\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ferrari<\/a> as he <a class=\"text-brand-hot-red underline decoration-1 hover:decoration-[3px]\" href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/latest\/article\/fp2-norris-sets-the-pace-again-ahead-of-dutch-grand-prix-as-session.5Wg647zzP3z6Gx7qRleWRJ\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trailed Lando Norris by 0.944s.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI would sum it up as a very, very, very difficult Friday \u2013 probably the worst Friday of the season, which is right after the holidays, so it\u2019s a bit of a wake-up call,\u201d said Leclerc.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cWe\u2019ve had some difficult Fridays and now it\u2019s up to us to turn the situation around.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cBut for sure, it\u2019s not been an easy day. FP1 was extremely difficult. FP2 was slightly better but still very far off where we want to be. I don\u2019t expect to fully return the situation, because I think McLaren is in a league of its own with Aston Martin, in what was a surprise for us.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cWe\u2019ll try to improve the car, because there is plenty to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">Reflecting that Ferrari is \u201closing basically 90% of the time in two corners\u201d, Leclerc refused to set any targets for what is possible this weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a very strange season,\u201d he added. \u201cI would never have said that I would be on pole in Budapest, so I don\u2019t really want to fix myself targets today, because after what was a very difficult weekend, it\u2019s not very exciting targets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to trying to turn the situation around and trying to make a miracle tomorrow, but it\u2019s not going to be an easy weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">On the other side of the garage, <a class=\"text-brand-hot-red underline decoration-1 hover:decoration-[3px]\" href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/drivers\/lewis-hamilton\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lewis Hamilton<\/a> offered a more positive assessment of the day, after finishing three places and 0.098s ahead of his team mate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cIt\u2019s not been the worst of days,\u201d said the seven-time World Champion. \u201cI think we were making progress. We were obviously quite far off in FP1, a lot further than normal. The first lap felt pretty decent, getting back, and it was a bit of a challenge from then. We made some progress over lunch, so we progressed but were still quite a chunk off. We\u2019ve got some work to do overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">A pair of spins punctuated Hamilton\u2019s day, but he was determined to take the positives even from these difficult moments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"typography-module_body-s-regular__ul7F5 typography-module_md_body-m-regular__d9VRg typography-module_lg_body-l-regular__dPa5z\">\u201cI think the first one was just pushing too much,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we ultimately said the ride quality was not where we would want it, because the car was quite unpredictable. The second one, I touched the grass and had a snap, and that was that. I was pushing, which is positive, I guess. Hopefully, no more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc conceded the opening day of the Dutch Grand Prix weekend was \u201cprobably the worst Friday of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-104858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}