Charles Leclerc was disappointed not to be fully in the running for a home pole today in front of grandstands packed full of Tifosi roaring the Ferrari on at every turn.
Leclerc had been aiming to be in contention for the top spot in qualifying at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza after finishing second in first practice, and third in final practice this morning.
But when it came down to the business end of qualifying, Leclerc found that neither he nor team mate Carlos Sainz had the edge needed to challenge McLaren pair Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, or Mercedes' George Russell.
Although he was only 0.134s off the pole pace, he will start tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix on the second row alongside Russell. It's good, but Leclerc clearly wanted more on the day.
"Disappointed," he told the media after the end of the session. "Yesterday it seemed like it was a positive day, today quite a bit less. P4 was the best we could do, but frustrating.
"We are very close to first place, contrary to last weekend," he noted, thinking back to sixth on the grid at Zandvoort. "It's a good step forward, however it’s not enough. I really hope that tomorrow we can turn the situation around.”
Last week Leclerc converted that sixth place start to a spot on the podium, so the chances are good that he can be in the top three again this week.
But Leclerc explained that he was struggling in the first sequence of corners, which is going to impede his hopes of getting ahead of his rivals when the lights go out for the start of the race.
"I’ve had so much understeer all weekend, so it’s not like it got worse,” he said of turns 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. "I already felt it in the practice sessions yesterday, so I struggled in some corners especially in the first sector.
"I think the others maybe made a step forward that we didn’t today, and that’s where we paid the price between being on pole or P4," he continued. "That’s where we lost the most lap time and what ultimately may have cost us.
"P4 was the best we could do today, but that’s not the kind of position we want to fight for, so we are going to work on finding what we are missing," he said. “I don’t like fighting for these kinds of positions.
"We're going to work on finding what we are missing ahead of tomorrow’s race. I expect this to be a tyre management race, so whoever does the best job there should come out on top. I'll give it everything and hope we can bring home a victory for our Tifosi."
Sainz will start right behind Leclerc on the grid, having been just six thousandths of a second slower that his team mate. He also hopes to make up positions when the lights go out tomorrow. "We knew it was going to be close.
“We looked like the whole session we were just one tenth off – one tenth off, one tenth off, one tenth off," he lamented. “Maybe in Q3 when the track temperature dropped a bit with the clouds coming, it went away from us and we started to pick up a lot of understeer.
"A shame because I was quick in sector 1 but I couldn’t quite make it work around sector 2 and 3 with the understeer. I didn’t manage to put enough balance on the car to get around them. But yeah, one tenth off. It is what it is.
"I feel like we pretty much extracted the maximum today and I remain confident for tomorrow," he said. "I think tomorrow will be a completely different day.
“Graining is going to be the order of the day. Everyone’s been struggling a lot with deg since yesterday so I think it’s going to be a very different Monza.
"With a solid race execution we should target gaining positions and offer our Tifosi a good show. I’m really looking forward to it."
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