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Charles Leclerc has pointed an accusing finger at himself following a poor qualifying performance ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.
Leclerc was rarely on the pace across all three sessions in his Ferrari as he was only 10th quickest in Q1 and fourth in Q2 before concluding with a disappointing seventh on the grid for Sunday’s race at Melbourne’s Albert Park.
The Monégasque finished 0.637s adrift of polesitter Max Verstappen in his Red Bull, and two places and a tenth-of-a-second down on team-mate Carlos Sainz.
Leclerc felt there was “a miscommunication” with Sainz at the start of his second run in Q3 which resulted in him being behind the Spaniard “for the whole first sector”.
This has since been raised at the team’s debrief to “improve those situations”, according to Leclerc who, aside from that moment, knows he did not do a good enough job overall
“Q1 and Q2, clearly, I wasn’t on it,” said Leclerc. “I wasn’t driving well. I wasn’t putting everything together, so that was my fault.
“Q3, I managed to fare a bit better. In the car, I was quite confident I could put everything together.
“I feel like we are quite competitive, but I just didn’t put everything together.
“So, it’s a bit my fault because when you arrive in Q3 you need to put everything together in whatever laps you do.
“We could have optimised it by having better communication. But I also didn’t do a great job today.”
Leclerc not panicking
A year ago in Melbourne, Leclerc comfortably netted pole and went on to win the race by 20 seconds from Sergio Perez in his Red Bull.
Twelve months on and the situation is very different for Leclerc and Ferrari, although he maintains there is no need for alarm.
“I’m not particularly happy about the way I drove,” added Leclerc. “But I wouldn’t panic because of today. I just needed to drive better.
“The car wasn’t that bad. The feeling was actually quite good. So let’s see tomorrow whether we have improved it (the car).
“Part of the changes we’ve done this weekend were to make the race pace better.
“It might have hurt the predictability in the race a little bit but hopefully we’ll see some positive signs tomorrow.”
