Leclerc dogged by electrical issue, but 'should be fine' for FP3

Charles Leclerc was forced to sit out Friday's second practice session at Silverstone due to an electrical issue that constrained his SF-23 to the Ferrari garage.

Leclerc's car suffered the problem just ahead of the start of the session. Unfortunately, the Scuderia's crews were unable to fix the issue in time for the Monegasque to join the action.

But the Ferrari charger expects to resume his preparations at the start of FP3 on Saturday, while no grid penalties appear forthcoming, which was a genuine concern for Leclerc given that he has already used up his allocation of control electronics and energy store elements.

"There was a small problem on the car, but it's like this, I think the team has identified what went wrong," said Leclerc, who had concluded FP1 earlier in the day in eighth position.

"We've changed basically everything that was on the car and it should be fine for tomorrow.

• Read also: 2023 British Grand Prix Free Practice 2 - Results

"[It was] An electrical issue, so it shouldn't have any influence on our weekend, apart from the lack of kilometres and laps in FP2.

"That's a bit unfortunate because that is normally where we prepare the race and Sunday seems to be dry, so we'll go a little bit into the unknown there."

Weather forecasts at Silverstone are factoring in the risk of rain in the afternoon.

"Tomorrow should be very different with rain around, so let's see," added Leclerc.

"In FP1, of course we learnt a few things, then we did all the changes to learn more in FP2 that we couldn't test, so that's a bit of a shame.

"I think we'll come back with the car I had in FP1 as the feeling was pretty good, then learning when you don't drive is pretty difficult."

On the other side of the Ferrari garage, Carlos Sainz nicely upheld Ferrari's prospects as he clocked in with second quickest lap in FP2, just 0.022s off the time set by the session's pace setter, Max Verstappen.

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