Leclerc rules out to fight for pole at Imola, but pins hopes on race pace

On the back of a quiet opening day for Ferrari on home turf, Charles Leclerc has ruled out to fight for pole position at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The opening practice saw Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc end up fifth and twelfth quickest, with both of them having set their best laps on Pirelli’s brand-new C6 compound.

The Ferrari duo then started themsecond practice on the medium tyres, setting times of 1m16.296s and 1m16.263s respectively. Midway through the session, the Monegasque went out on soft tyres and posted a 1m15.768s on his second flying lap, followed shortly after by his British team-mate, who stopped the clocks in 1m15.943s.

In the final third of the session, both cars were fitted with the medium set they used at the start of the hour to run with a heavy fuel load.

Having missed media duties on Thursday due to illness, Leclerc had a relatively straightforward day, but he had to overcome a few technical issues

The Monegasque suffered problems with his helmet in FP1 with air pulling it up at high speed, before he struggled for braking stability in the second one-hour session.

“FP1 was a bit tricky and we faced different challenges during the session. In FP2, we put it together more, but we are still lacking overall performance,” started Leclerc his reflection on the day.

“Our race pace looked decent, however, this is a track where overtaking is quite difficult. Our weak point at the moment is our qualifying pace, so this is our priority to work on ahead of tomorrow.

"Our weak point at the moment is the Qualifying pace and we still need to work on that. To go and take pole, honestly I don't think we've got it in the car for now but the race pace was strong so that's positive.

"But [it's] also a track where overtaking is very difficult, so we've got to focus on our qualifying pace, that's where we are putting all our effort into."