Charles Leclerc vented his frustration at Formula 1’s new rules after a mistake in qualifying at the Japanese Grand Prix upset his power unit’s energy deployment and cost him dear.
The Ferrari driver qualified fourth at Suzuka, over 0.6 seconds off Kimi Antonelli‘s Mercedes on pole position, but was the fastest driver through the first sector of the lap in Q3.
A slide on the exit of Spoon corner appeared to cost him time, but he said it was the loss in energy deployment that it triggered on the following straight that proved most costly.
“I honestly cannot stand these rules in qualifying,” Leclerc over team radio as he returned to the pits after his lap. “It’s a f—— joke.
“I go faster in corners, I go on throttle earlier, for f—- sake, I lose everything in the straight.”
Comparing Leclerc’s fastest lap in Q2 with his fastest lap in Q3, an apparent drop off in energy deployment on the straight following the slide cost him 0.148 seconds.
New rules this season demand nearly half of the maximum power output of the power unit comes from its battery, which means cars can be left down on power when the electrical energy is depleted or the deployment strategy interrupted by an unexpected lift off the throttle.
A number of drivers, including Leclerc at the Chinese Grand Prix, have reported that small errors that require a tiny lift on the throttle can dramatically upset the power deployment later in the lap.
Leclerc said the slide on the exit of Spoon corner had not worried him in the moment, but admitted he was frustrated by the resulting loss in deployment on the flat-out run to the final chicane.
“It stayed pretty calm [during the slide], I would say that when on the straights and you start losing time being flat out is where my heart rate goes particularly high,” he said.
“But in the corner itself, I mean, these are the kind of things that happens in Q3 and especially with my driving style I know it happens very often.
“In the past it paid off more than it hurts you, but with these cars it seems to bite you more than it pays off just because then I lost a big amount of speed in the straight — not a huge amount nothing close to whatever I’ve had in Shanghai but still I’ve lost some time compared to my Q2 lap which is very frustrating but this is something we’ll look at and try to understand.”
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Leclerc said the new rules no longer reward risk taking, and instead put an emphasis on consistency from lap to lap.
“Honestly, I think the thing is in Q3 that’s where you want to get out on the track and try things you’ve never tried before, taking risks that you’ve never taken before and that’s been rewarding for most of us in all our career and now this is not possible anymore,” he said.
“Every time you go a little bit over the limit, any time you have a bit of a snap this is costing energy on the power unit side and then you pay the price more.
“I feel like at the moment consistency is paying off more than being brave and going to take something that you’ve never tried before, which is a shame and which makes qualifying a little bit less challenging.
“This is something that we need to work on but it’s a known issue, it’s not that the FIA or the teams are just accepting the situation as it is there’s a lot of work behind the scenes and I hope that we can find a solution as soon as possible.”
