Leclerc to miss out on Sepang practice run

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Charles Leclerc will not take part in Friday's first free practice session in Malaysia as had originally been planned.

The 18-year-old Monaco-born racing driver, who is a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, has already had the opportunity of three outings behind the wheel of the Haas F1 car this year at Silverstone, Hockenheim and the Hungaroring where he took the place of the team's regular driver Esteban Gutierrez in FP1.

Leclerc was due to have a further outing this week at Sepang International Circuit, as well as a final opportunity at Abu Dhabi during the last weekend of the season. However Leclerc revealed on Friday that this plan had now been changed.

"I won't be driving FP1 in Malaysia due to a change of the timetable," he tweeted. "But I will be in Abu Dhabi and hopefully on another FP1 as well."

Leclerc is currently competing in the GP3 Series, and is leading the series standings by 24 points from Trident’s Antonio Fuoco. He needs to win the championship to secure the superlicense points that would allow him a chance of moving into Formula One.

Next weekend GP3 will be holding its first event in Malaysia in the championship's history. Normally GP3 practice takes place after Formula One's two Friday free practice sessions are concluded, but the timetable has been revised for Sepang.

Instead, GP3 practice will now be held on Thursday with qualifying taking place on Friday afternoon, meaning that Leclerc would have been constantly changing back and forth between GP3 and F1 cars.

It's expected that in place of Sepang, Leclerc will instead get an extra chance to take part in F1 practice at Interlagos on November 11 ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix, the penultimate race of the season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.