Charles Leclerc has apologised to his team after sending his SF21 hurtling into the barriers at 240 km/h during Free Practice Two this evening at the Jeddah Circuit.
The Monegasque driver lost control of his Ferrari through the high-speed Turns 22 and 23 and ended up in the barriers – bringing about a red flag in the final minutes of the session.
Coverage of the accident showed a huge amount of damage to his car, but thankfully Leclerc was unhurt.
Speaking at the end of the day he said that it was “a day that unfortunately didn’t end up the way that I wanted, but overall we went through everything we wanted to test
“I think the potential is here and if we put everything together for tomorrow, we should have a good day.
“But obviously, I’m sorry for the team that will have to do a big, big work ahead of tomorrow for the car to be ready, and hopefully I will do a good enough job to thank them in the best way possible with a good result tomorrow,” he continued.
Speaking about his potential heading into the rest of the weekend, the Ferrari driver said: “I feel relatively confident.
“I did a good build-up through the day, you know, getting up to speed very little by little, and the pace has been there all day. Just trying different compounds, different fuel loads [and] we need to analyse who is in front and who is behind.
“But at the moment it looks like another very tight battle with AlphaTauri, Alpine… and McLaren and ourselves.
“So, it looks like from fifth backward it could be a very tight fight like it was in Qatar,” he concluded.
The team took to Twitter this evening to give fans an update on his car ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying and said: “Update on #Charles16’s car.
“He will be able to run the same chassis and PU tomorrow as he used today.”
Update on #Charles16's car 🚨
He will be able to run the same chassis and PU tomorrow as he used today.#essereFerrari🔴 #SaudiArabianGP pic.twitter.com/AoV1z6yCJj
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) December 3, 2021
