Charles Leclerc left with ‘mixed feelings’ after fightback to P5 in Singapore as he takes blame for qualifying mistake

Charles Leclerc reflected on his Singapore Grand Prix with “mixed feelings” after climbing from P9 on the grid to a final result of P5, the Monegasque having stated that he paid the price for what he deemed as his own mistake during Saturday’s qualifying.

It was a weekend of ups and downs for Ferrari, with Leclerc and McLaren’s Lando Norris seemingly in a league of their own at the top of the timesheets during Friday’s practice sessions.

However, that pace seemed to have slipped come Saturday, while Leclerc’s qualifying ended in disaster when his sole flying lap was deleted for exceeding track limits, leading to the seven-time race winner voicing his frustration post-session about the tyre temperatures.

That saw him down in ninth on the grid, leaving him with extra work to do during Sunday’s 62-lap race. After finding himself stuck behind the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso and Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg for many laps, Leclerc was able to make up ground once in free air and had the pace to eventually pass Lewis Hamilton for fifth place.

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE - SEPTEMBER 22: Charles Leclerc of Monaco driving the (16) Ferrari SF-24 on — Leclerc recovered from his qualifying issues to take P5 in the Singapore Grand Prix

Despite trying to close in on Hamilton’s Mercedes team mate George Russell, Leclerc had to settle for P5 and admitted later on that he felt a range of emotions when looking back on his weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

“It’s mixed feelings,” the 26-year-old explained. “Today I think we did a really, really good job and I think there wasn’t anything on the table to do better. We had a frustrating first part of the race where we couldn’t do anything but just wait, and then once Nico and Fernando pitted I could push.

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“We had good pace, we stopped and [had] a really strong second stint that brought us back to P5, so on that I was really happy. However, a bit of a disappointing weekend.

“Yesterday I arrived here [to the media pen] very angry because of the tyres – looking back at it, yes the tyres were not exactly in the right window, but this happens very often in qualifying and I think the main issue was me locking up into Turn 1 and going wide and having track limits and a bad lap and everything.

‘I was probably the one to blame’ – Leclerc walks back tyre criticism

“With hindsight, I think I was probably the one to blame yesterday, and it happens – there will be qualifying that we do well and qualifyings where you do a mistake, especially when you have only one lap and then you pay the price.

“The only problem is that to not do a lap in Q3 here in Singapore is probably the track where you pay the price the most. But again, if I look [at] only today, I feel like we’ve done a really, really good job. If I look at the weekend as a whole, I paid the price for the mistake of yesterday.”

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Asked if the fact that he had taken the blame for what happened in qualifying combined with the good pace displayed by the SF-24 during Sunday’s race had given him confidence for the remaining six races of the season – given that addressing his own mistakes may be easier than having to fix car issues – Leclerc responded: “Yes, as I said, I’ll get it right sometimes and I’ll get it wrong sometimes, and yesterday I got it wrong.

“I will bounce back next weekend – I mean next race weekend, because now we’ve got a bit of a break – but in Austin with hopefully a good quali again and a good weekend overall.”