Hamilton fastest but Leclerc expects ‘tight qualifying’

Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari led the way in Friday practice at the Monaco Grand Prix but his team-mate Charles Leclerc expects “a tight qualifying” between them, Red Bull and Mercedes.

Ferrari achieved a one-two in both sessions, Hamilton leading Leclerc by 0.111 seconds in the second to end the day fastest after the positions were reversed in the first.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was third fastest in both, followed by the Mercedes drivers, with George Russell ending the day fourth fastest and 0.124secs quicker than championship leader Kimi Antonelli.

Leclerc, the only Ferrari driver to speak to the media in the brief pooled interviews that take place on Friday, said: “Red Bull and Max especially was very close to us in practice two so I expect them to be very strong.

“And I expect Mercedes as well to be very close once they put everything together in qualifying. So I think it will be a tight ‘quali’ and more than what people expect.”

Leclerc said he lost ground after leading Hamilton by more than 0.2secs in the first session with a recurrence of the braking problems that affected him in the last race in Canada.

“It has been two weekends I am facing some issues on the brakes and I am just struggling on my side on brakes at the moment,” he said.

“We haven’t found so far a solution. We will keep working on that and try to make sure we do a step forward and in P2 I lost a bit of confidence on that. That’s why I do a bit more mistakes since two weekends.”

Red Bull head of engineering Paul Monaghan also predicted a tight qualifying session.

And Russell said what appeared to be struggles for him in the first session were simply down to Mercedes employing different set-up directions across the cars to enhance their understanding.

“Straight away I felt better (in the second session),” he said, “but we are off the pace compared to Ferrari.”

Antonelli was complaining about the car feeling unpredictable in the middle sector of the lap, the section from Mirabeau to Tabac including the harbour-front chicane.

Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar recovered well from a crash in first practice to set sixth fastest time, ahead of the McLaren of Oscar Piastri, whose team appeared to be struggling through the day.

The Australian said: “We’re just lacking grip, mainly. It is not really one place where we’re struggling, we’re just struggling a little bit everywhere. A bit of a difficult day.”

Team-mate Lando Norris, who won this race last year on his way to a first world title, stopped on track with a technical problem early in the session and ended up 19th fastest.

Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto were best of the rest after the top four teams, with Haas driver Oliver Bearman completing the top 10.

The second session was relatively incident-free, despite a number of drivers flirting with the barriers, although there was a late red flag when Sergio Perez stopped his Cadillac at Casino Square with his front brakes on fire.

The Mexican’s stoppage in tandem with Norris’ and the teams’ desire to focus on raw performance for qualifying because of the difficulty of overtaking in Monaco meant there were no meaningful comparisons of the cars’ race pace on longer runs.

In the first session, Hadjar lost control on the entry to the second Swimming Pool chicane, the rear swinging around on entry and spinning him into the barriers on the exit.

In first practice, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso rescued what could have been a high-speed crash at the harbour front chicane.

The rear flicked sideways as he went over the crest at the start of the braking point, and as he corrected, the car fishtailed, sending the front towards the barriers.

Although the incident broke the car’s front-wing endplate, Alonso kept it largely under control and out of the barriers as it slid wildly up the kerb on the outside of the circuit.

Aston Martin had a difficult time in the second session, Alonso ending up 20th fastest and team-mate Lance Stroll slowest of all, and 0.880secs off the Spanish veteran.

Alonso said: “It’s a little bit of everything. We are not happy with the front axle, losing a lot of front grip in the middle of the corners and we have this chronic understeer we cannot solve.

“Upshifts, downshifts, harvesting level into the corner in Monaco is crucial to be precise and confident into the corners and at the moment it is way too inconsistent the way the car downshifts and the speed you approach the corners. It is not easy to drive. We are not at the level yet.”

The 44-year-old also came up with the latest in a series of eye-catching lines to describe his unhappiness with the new cars introduced by this year’s rules, with their nominal 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power.

“This is the worst generation of cars I drove in Monaco,” he said. “The way you charge the engine with the braking and lifting off creates a lot of inconsistency into the engine braking, sometimes you have less, sometimes you have push, sometimes not.

“If the battery is full, you don’t recharge so you don’t have engine braking. It’s like pushing. It’s just the rules. Hybrid cars should not be racing. Simple as that.”