United States – Francophone Review: Leclerc in Great Difficulty

Charles Leclerc: 4th (4th on the grid)

The Monegasque driver had a just decent qualifying session. He was outpaced by Sebastian Vettel who started 2nd on the grid.

Charles Leclerc had a very anonymous race. In the early stages of the race, he was losing a lot of time on the top three and even 1 second per lap to Daniel Ricciardo, admittedly on softer tires.

Sentenced to finish 4th with a car struggling with its tires, he even experienced the longest pit stop of the race (around ten seconds). The only consolation for the Monegasque driver is the fastest lap point, which surely won’t make up for the 50-second gap to the winner.

« We were absolutely nowhere during the first stint, I don’t know what happened with the tires. From the start, I didn’t feel them right, then we put on hard tires. It wasn’t easy at all, we had no grip whatsoever. Just at the end, it wasn’t too bad. With Sebastian’s accident, there were many turns where I was no longer taking the curbs, and I think that didn’t help. It was a very complicated day for us. »

Pierre Gasly: 9th (10th on the grid)

For the third consecutive race, Pierre Gasly managed to qualify in Q3. A 10th place on the grid will handicap him the next day for the race.

Le Normand gained two positions right from the start by taking advantage of the collision between Carlos Sainz and Alexander Albon to climb to 8th place. This quickly turned into 7th position thanks to Sebastian Vettel’s retirement on the 13th lap.

The incident that will ruin his race is a very early stop on the 20th lap to cover the strategy of Lando Norris, with whom he was battling during his first stint. Unfortunately for him, he emerged behind the other McLaren of Carlos Sainz.

Now on hard tires that are supposed to last until the end of the race, Gasly lost a lot of pace in the final laps. A descent into hell that ended with contact with Sergio Perez, breaking his rear suspension. A race that ends out of the points even though the Toro Rosso driver had completed almost all of the laps in the top ten.

« We were having a good race, we were in the Top 10 the whole race. It wasn’t easy. We tried to do a long stint with the hard tires. It was going well, we were fighting with Sergio but we made contact at turn number 13, it bent my suspension and we had to stop. »

Romain Grosjean: 15th (15th on the grid)

After a short escapade on Thursday in a Nascar car, the Frenchman returned to his very difficult-to-drive Haas for the rest of the weekend. Grosjean made it out of Q1 by a few hundredths.

As expected, the VF19 had much less race pace than in qualifying. He was forced to fight at the back of the grid. An anonymous race for poor Romain Grosjean, who was furthermore outpaced by Kevin Magnussen throughout the entire Grand Prix. He finishes ahead of his garage neighbor thanks to the latter’s retirement during the penultimate lap. The Dane’s brakes gave out before the finish.

We knew the race was going to be complicated, we had poor top speed. I felt good in the first laps, I tried to overtake the Renault but it was impossible to pass. Then for the strategy, we attempted a medium-soft and tried to last long on medium, but it was a mistake because we should have switched to hard tires much earlier, and as a result, I lost a lot when everyone else pitted. After that, I’m happy with how I drove because I got the best out of the car. We know it’s a tough end of the year, and we have to tough it out and wait.