"Qualifying will be super important": Charles Leclerc hails performance of Ferrari upgrades in Imola

Imola [Italy], May 18 : As the Italian team conducted several modifications on the first day of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was happy with his day on track but cautioned that they needed to "keep our feet on the ground" in preparation for qualifying.

Having topped the timesheets in both of Friday's practice sessions in Imola, Leclerc appeared to be at ease in his SF-24.

"For now, everything went quite smoothly. The feeling with the car is quite good, the upgrades on the car are working as expected which also is a good step. And yeah, it's been a very smooth day so it is great, and being at home is always a special feeling for Ferrari, being here and having so much support all over the track means so much for all of us," Leclerc said as quoted by Formula 1.

"It will be great if the weekend continues in that direction. However, tomorrow the conditions will change massively. The wind will completely turn around, which will have a big effect on all the cars, and there we have to be the best at anticipating those changes," he added.

Compared to Ferrari's performance, Red Bull seemed to be having trouble with the day as Max Verstappen complained about a lack of grip during both practice sessions.

In light of this, Leclerc was questioned about whether he was daydreaming about the potential outcomes of Sunday's race and qualifying, and the Ferrari driver said, "We need to keep our feet on the ground because tomorrow is going to be big changes with the track conditions."

"Track position here is absolutely everything, so qualifying will be super important and it will be important for us to do the job in qualifying. So there is still a lot of work for to do, and we will give it our all to have a great qualifying tomorrow," Leclerc said.

Leclerc's teammate Carlos Sainz also had good things to say about Friday's race. After finishing third in FP1, the Spaniard ended FP2 in sixth place on the timesheets.

"I'm feeling good. I had a good FP1, I felt really at home with the car and then we used FP2 as a bit of a test session to try a couple of things," Sainz said.

"It's been a long time since we had the opportunity to test since it's been two Sprint weekends in a row. We wanted to test a couple of items, and explore a bit the car set-up, probably went in the wrong direction but we will go back to the FP1 set-up and probably feel stronger again tomorrow," he added.

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