Angry Leclerc says time gap issue led to botched final Q2 run

A frustrated Charles Leclerc missed out on a spot in Q3 by just 0.043s, the Monegasque blaming a time gap issue for the botched opportunity.

Leclerc will line up P11 on Sunday's Russian GP grid, but the Ferrari charger believes a spot among the top ten was in the cards until the time gap to Renault's Esteban Ocon was underestimated, in his opinion, by the Ferrari pitwall on his final hot lap.

"They told me that I had Ocon behind me, about one or two seconds from me," said a visibly irritated Leclerc.

"Instead I think it was further back, I think I had more margin.

• 2020 Russian Grand Prix - Qualifying results

"Now I am angry, everything is still fresh. I have to calm down. The race is tomorrow, the race is where they will award points.

"But for me, it's a difficult weekend. In practice I hadn't driven well, then I started to find the rhythm in qualifying. But I was not able to show the potential of the car, and I'm sorry".

Earlier in the disrupted second segment of qualifying, Leclerc suffered a close call when he rounded Turn 4 at full speed only to discover his teammate's crashed car stranded in the middle of the track!

"It was quite scary, but hopefully he's fine, and it was not much worse than that," Leclerc said. "Now it's more the disappointment of not going to Q3."

Vettel, who was taking more risks than usual in a bid to make the Q3 cut, admitted he had already been given a warning by his SF1000 in Turn 2 that he was close to stepping over the limit, which he did two corners later.

"Already in Turn 2, I lost the car, and in Turn 4 I lost it again, and couldn't catch it any more," explained the German driver.

"In qualy I was struggling, especially in the first sector. I tried to obviously take a little bit more risk.

"I lost the car already in 2 and again in 4. Not happy obviously, but yeah, compared to the morning session, I struggled quite a bit in the afternoon."

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