A bitter sixth place
The difficulties suffered by Charles Leclerc during the Sprint Qualifying of the Chinese Grand Prix were evident, between a first lap with a mistake and a second one characterized by a large gap incurred in the final sector. The Ferrari driver will thus start sixth, one second away from the man on pole – George Russell in the Mercedes – and four tenths behind teammate Lewis Hamilton, fourth.
Leclerc’s radio comment to Bryan Bozzi after his last lap of SQ3 was eloquent: “What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I lost 4 tenths just on the second straight.”
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Confirmation from Federico Albano’s telemetry
In short, something went wrong on the last straight, a circumstance confirmed by the data collected by our Federico Albano, which highlights a 10 km/h difference between Leclerc and Hamilton in that section:
On the long straight #Hamilton did 330, against only 320 for #Leclerc. Regarding the 4 tenths lost by Charles, it’s something that weighs heavily; looking at it this way, it seems like something with the deployment. Good job by Lewis anyway (a relative concept obviously, but it’s a good Hamilton with what he has). #ChineseGP pic.twitter.com/5Ndf6CoFAn
— Federico Albano (@Fred__18) March 13, 2026
Leclerc’s comment
“The session was a bit complicated, very frustrating. I made a mistake during the first lap and on the second I was doing a good lap, but I lost 4 tenths on the second straight. I don’t know why, we have to try to understand what happened. I don’t think not having fitted the ‘Macarena’ wing changes the picture of our situation. In the race we should be relatively stronger than in qualifying. In qualifying, Mercedes seems to be a step ahead, especially because on a flying lap the Mercedes power unit always finds extra time, for some reason, and we can’t. In the race, however, we are closer and we hope to be able to make a comeback tomorrow.”
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