I risked more than the others today, says Charles Leclerc

Having dominated the second one-hour apply session at the Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc said that his spectacular type was all the way down to the indisputable fact that he pushed more at present than the others as he expects his rivals to come back again on Saturday.

Hot on the heels of final weekend’s residence race in Imola, Ferrari had a comparatively trouble-free time on the opening day at the Monaco Grand Prix, getting by way of all its Friday free apply programme.

Charles Leclerc topped the timesheet in the second session, with Carlos Sainz sixth. The Scuderia said that the “aim was to do as many laps as possible so that the drivers could get to grips with racing between the walls and that goal was achieved with 141 laps completed over the two sessions, during which the team was also able to evaluate all three tyre compounds.”

In the opening session, the SF-24s ran the Hard and Medium tyres whereas each Sainz and Leclerc used the yellow-banded tyres for his or her first stint in FP2 earlier than switching to the red-walled tyres for his or her qualifying simulation run.

Leclerc had a barely disrupted finish to his first apply as he ran over the particles that flew off Zhou Guanyu’s Kick Sauber at Sainte Devote. However, the Monégasque bounced again in the second session to set the quickest time of the day with a 1m11.278s, racking up a complete of 37 laps.

Speaking of his day, Leclerc mentioned: “All in all, it appears that evidently we’ve got automobile for this monitor and I felt fairly assured with it at present. We need to maintain that rhythm in place for FP3, as a result of I might have taken a bit more danger at present than others did, which paid off by way of lap occasions, however the key right here is to place all of it collectively in qualifying when everybody begins actually pushing the limits.

“We did a good job overall and have to keep focusing on ourselves. It was a great feeling to be back in the car on the streets of my home town and to feel all the support, we will give it everything to have a good one tomorrow,” mentioned the two-time Monaco Grand Prix pole-sitter.

His team-mate Carlos Sainz had a more difficult day as he struggled for tempo over a single sizzling lap. His finest lap time in FP2 was solely ok for sixth as he was virtually seven tenths of a second off Leclerc’s benchmark time.

Commenting on his day, the Spaniard added: “It was a difficult Friday for me. I struggled to search out consistency in the automobile and performed round fairly a bit with the set-up.

“For the last stint of the day, I was happier and the long run was positive. We will focus on carrying that feeling into tomorrow’s practice as we prepare for qualifying,” mentioned the Madrid-born driver.