The son of the Principality of Monaco, Charles Leclerc, will take the first pole position at the French Grand Prix, the twelfth round of the Formula One World Championship, on Sunday after putting Ferrari ahead of Red Bull, Dutch world champion Max Verstappen and Mexican Sergio Pérez.
Along with Spaniard Carlos Sainz, who starts last Sunday and is penalized for changing his car’s powertrain, Leclerc finds himself alone in the battle against the Red Bull duo.
But on Saturday, Sainz played his part to the fullest and helped ensure that Leclerc, the winner of the last race at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, closed the gap separating him from the leaders of Verstappen to 38 points, an opportunity to start from first place. place for the seventh time this season and the sixteenth in his career, hoping to emerge victorious and return to the title fight again.
The competition between Leclerc and Verstappen was fierce, with the former leading the Dutchman by a narrow margin of 0.008 seconds, with Pires trailing them by four tenths of a second.
Ferrari’s strategy worked after it allowed Science to provide Leclerc with a straight-line drag coefficient.
The drivers returned in the last minutes of the third qualifying round for a decisive final try and Leclerc managed to improve his time again in the first clip and in the second he took advantage of the presence of Sayin to maintain his advantage and then also scored in the last third clip, which allowed him to start Sunday from position First time 1:30.872 minutes.
“It was a great lap and I have to admit Carlos helped me,” Leclerc said. “Without him it would have been more difficult. It’s really a team effort.”
Although he improved his time in his last attempt, Verstappen was three-tenths of a second clear of the heavily contested Leclerc at Sunday’s Paul Ricard start with Pires third and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton fourth.
Hamilton was the only one to finish the tests less than a second from the top three, while his McLaren driver Lando Norris was fifth ahead of another Brit, Mercedes’ George Russell, who starts sixth.
The results of the third round of official testing were distributed as follows:
1. Charles Leclerc (Monaco/Ferrari) 1:30.872
2. Max Verstappen (Netherlands/Red Bull) 1:31.176
3. Sergio Perez (Mexico/Red Bull) 1:31.335
4. Lewis Hamilton (UK/Mercedes) 1:31.765
5. Lando Norris (Great Britain/McLaren) 1:32.032
6. George Russell (UK/Mercedes) 1:32.131
7. Fernando Alonso (Spain/Alps) 1:32.552
8. Yuki Tsunoda (Japan/Fatori-Red Bull) 1:32.780
9. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark/Haas) 0.000
10. Carlos Sainz (Spain/Ferrari) 0.000
