Leclerc aiming for 'clean race' after qualifying in P2

Charles Leclerc said he was aiming for a clean race this weekend in get his championship campaign back on track after a troubled run in recent outings.

Leclerc just missed out on pole position to chief title rival Max Verstappen in Friday's qualifying session after the Red Bull driver pulled out a brilliant final lap at the end of Q3.

That means Leclerc will join Verstappen on the front row of the grid for tomorrow's sprint race, the result of which will set the order for Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix.

• Read also: Verstappen pips Leclerc and Sainz to Austria pole as both Mercedes crash

Sainz will start from just behind in third, still riding high on the success of claiming his maiden F1 victory in last week's British GP.

“I think we are all three very, very close, so it was an exciting qualifying," Leclerc told the media in parc ferme after the end of the session which saw two red flags, both caused by Mercedes drivers.

The stoppage for George Russell's accident left the drivers with only two and a half minutes to make their final runs, and Leclerc admitted that this had been a factor.

“In the last lap I struggled a little bit bringing the tyres back after such a long time in the pits.

“In the last lap I struggled a little bit bringing the tyres back after such a long time in the pits," he explained. “But Max was just a little bit quicker, so congrats to him. Hopefully we'll have an exciting race tomorrow.

“I just want to have a clean race," he added. "Obviously there's been five races that it's [been] a bit of a disaster on my side so I just hope that everything will go clean, and that we can finally score the points that we deserve.”

Leclerc suffered engine failures while leading in Spain and Azerbaijan, while strategic miscues by the team likely cost them one-two finishes in at Monaco and Silverstone leaving Leclerc frustrated.

Sainz benefitted from the latter to win the race, and was happy to go into tomorrow's spring race very much in the mix with Leclerc and Verstappen.

“When you look back and you see how close it is, you go back to the lap and find places where you've left that tenth of a second that could have given us pole," he said when asked if he felt he could have improved further and taken pole.

“I know where the lap time is. I just wish I could have done it a little bit better," he added.

“But I'm sure these two guys also know more or less where they lost it or where they gained it," he acknowledged. “The good thing is that we put a good lap there at the end of Q3.

“It wasn't easy because the tyres were very cold after the red flag," he added “Trusting the car into Turn 1, into Turn 3 wasn't the easiest."

Both drivers say they are aiming to pile the pressure on Verstappen at the start os Saturday's sprint, aiming to snatch control of the front row of the grid for Sunday.

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