Arthur Leclerc’s Budapest Weekend In His Words

25 July 2023

Dealing with difficult weekends is part and parcel of being a driver, and for Arthur Leclerc, Round 10 in Budapest certainly proved to be one of his most challenging yet.

Follow the DAMS’ driver as he reflects on the question marks over his missing pace, the strength and determination in his relationship with the French outfit and why rather than dwelling on the negatives, he’s focusing his attention on the positives going forward.

PRACTICE – P20

“It went really bad. I don’t really know what’s happening, it’s been a few races now where I’ve had problems and I’m not able to explain what’s wrong. The team is working really hard behind me to find the problem, but there is something clearly that is not right and we are nowhere.

“When you see a season like last year where you’re in the top five in Formula 3 and then, you come here and you’re struggling to qualify in P15. We’re struggling, it’s not great. It doesn’t bring any confidence for Qualifying. We’ll keep checking what’s going wrong and I’ll give my maximum like always.

“My relationship with the team is quite important, especially in moments like this. It’s a really hard moment for me because one car is performing and the other is not, so it’s really important that we trust each other in times like these because everything is not going great for me.”

QUALIFYING – P17

“I had a bit of traffic, but to be honest, it doesn’t explain why I’m 1.1 seconds behind P1. In Free Practice, it was the same gap so it’s just constantly slow. In Practice we were just not able to find the issue, so we will check on the car tonight to go for the race tomorrow. You work massively hard, you give everything and the result is simply not there, it feels really bad.

“I’ve been quite good with the tyre management since Formula 3, but it’s looking like that we are better in the races let’s say than in Qualifying. Anyways, we are not that strong in the race like people think, obviously we fight with people that are a bit more behind. So, we are able to do a bit of a better job as a team, but we will not be able to win any races for the moment. Firstly, because of the Qualifying pace and even with the races, we are nowhere near where we should be, so it’s a bit depressing.”

SPRINT RACE – P15

“It was quite a good race in terms of race pace, in terms of results – unfortunately not. I struggled a bit to get a good start and got pushed off a bit here and there, so lost some positions. Then, after I came back through the field, I was involved in the small contact between Ralph Boschung and Clément Novalak, so I had to start again from last and try to come back as much as possible. Still recovered two or three positions but was looking quite good with our race pace. I got the fastest lap in the race, so was showing strong performance, but unfortunately not the results we wanted.

“It’s the starting point for the Feature Race tomorrow, so I learnt quite a lot about the tyre degradation and about the behaviour of the medium tyres in the race. Obviously, it gives us a lot of information for starting the race tomorrow and gives me an idea of what I need to do with my driving to adjust the management."

FEATURE BACK – P13

“The Feature Race was really positive in terms of pace, I felt quite confident. I think I struggled a bit to use all of my strength on the medium compounds during the first stint, where I think I was a bit too conservative. I was expecting a little bit more deg, but on the softs, not looking at the traffic I had at the end of the race, it was looking really, really strong. It feels great because after Free Practice, Qualifying and the lost feeling I had with the car in the last few races because of the chassis damage. It was just positive to get back the confidence in the car and to show good race pace, so it’s promising maybe for Spa.

“It’s been a frustrating weekend, so obviously it will be important to grow from this weekend, to try to understand why it has not been good and always to try to see the positive in what has been the negative, to just keep working hard and not lose the motivation even in hard times. That’s really what I’ll try to do on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the race weekend in Spa. I’ll be back at the simulator with my team to work and focus massively for next weekend. You cannot lose time being frustrated too much because you have a race weekend coming up, so we keep pushing.”

UP NEXT – A CHANCE TO BOUNCE BACK AT SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS

“Approaching Spa, it’s quite tricky to feel confident or look forward to going to Spa, especially when you see the issues we’ve had in the last few race. My target will be just to completely forget everything that happened in the previous races, just keep going, keep working and try to achieve some good results. Just to show a big improvement in Spa will be my target.”