Leclerc surprised by Alfa as Sainz 'pays the price' for new rules

Ferrari are continuing to struggle to find their footing in the 2023 season, with another less than perfect performance in today's qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc did make it through to the last round and will start from sixth on the grid, but lost out on a place to Alfa Romeo's Zhou Guanyu. But Carlos Sainz failed to make the final cut and will start from P11.

“They were very strong,” said Leclerc of the surprise pace shown by both Zhou and his Alfa team mate Valtteri Bottas today, admitting that he had been forewarned by Ferrari's overnight analysis but that he hadn't believed it.

“Yesterday the team showed me the simulations of what we thought they would be like and honestly they were all right," he said. "I was like ‘there might be something wrong in that, it might be a mistake’ and they proved me wrong today.

"The team expected it," he added. “It’s very difficult [for me] to understand because of my knowledge: I haven’t checked, but I don’t think they had any particularly big upgrades for this weekend.

“But then from one weekend to the other, everybody’s changing so it’s very difficult to understand," he mused. "McLaren is also showing that they’ve done a general big step forward.

• Read also: Hamilton stuns Verstappen to claim Hungary pole

"Compared to Silverstone, the Hungaroring has completely different characteristics and yet they are still very quick again," he continued. "So we need to do a step forward."

Leclerc reiterated his belief that the SF-23 "is still quite fast, but it’s still too picky," adding that high or gusty winds brought out the worst in it. "Although I am happy with my lap, we just weren’t fast enough. Our car is quite sensitive to wind and that also affected the outcome.

"Here there are some corners that are very affected by the wind and today we were suffering a lot in those," he said. "Whenever we are in those conditions we are struggling more than others.

“So it’s still the same problem. We did some step forward, but the others don’t have that pickiness."

"It’s difficult to say who our main competitors will be tomorrow," he continued. "Tyre management is key on this track, if we manage that well we can have a good race."

As for Sainz, he felt that his failure to make it into the final top ten pole shootout round was due to the new Alternative Tyre Allocation system introduced for the first time in Hungary.

“If they want to spice it up – I don’t think they need to – but if they want to mix things up a bit, then mix them up," he commented. "Today I paid the price for it.

The new rules meant all cars in Q2 had to run on the medium compound: “I’ve been feeling a bit weird with that medium compound all weekend," Sainz complained. “It’s not like on the softs we were stellar either, but we were definitely more competitive on the soft tyres or harder tyres than on a medium compound.

“Every time I ran it, we were always struggling a lot in sector one, getting them to work.

"It was even harder than the hard tyre so I knew Q2 was going to be the toughest session for us," he noted, after missing the cut by an achingly narrow two thousandths of a second to Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.

"A shame, but it was only two-thousandths – which in this F1 those two thousandths cost you a lot," he conceded. “It was a track that we expected to be a bit more competitive also and now unfortunately we are P6 and P11.

"It wasn’t too bad, but I just lacked quite a bit of grip," he explained. In Q1 we got through nicely, but then as soon as I put that compound on again in Q2 I was just sliding a lot in sector one, and never being able to put a decent lap together."

Team principal Frederic Vasseur had a different view. "Our performance today has nothing to do with the new format, which is the same for everybody.

"We struggled to get a clear picture of our situation before the session, but what let us down is that we did not do a good job in terms of tyre management.

"As for the race, it’s hard to say how it will unfold," he decided. "Track conditions tomorrow will be completely different to Friday which means we all go into the race a bit blind, since we had limited runs with high fuel this morning.

"The opening lap will be crucial as it is quite difficult to overtake," he added. "It will be an interesting challenge, and we will have a lot of work to do tonight.

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