A fruitless weekend for Arthur Leclerc at Spa-Francorchamps as he looks to aim for “a positive end to the season” after finishing P9 in the Sprint Race and P11 in the Feature Race.
After the rain-affected qualifying session and his team’s unlucky position in the pitlane put an end to Arthur getting a reasonable grid position for the races this weekend in Spa, it was always going to be hard to come through the field from his P15 starting position.
The Sprint was a positive race for the Monegasque as even with engine issues throughout the entirety of the 18 Laps, he managed to climb his way up the grid to a P10 only 2.2 Seconds behind the Campos of Ralph Boschung.
He was later promoted up to P9 after Richard Verschoor’s disqualification for a technical breach.
The Feature Race was again not a straight-forward ordeal, onto the start of Lap 4 Leclerc was in P12 fighting with Roy Nissany on the run down to Eau Rouge, just before the apex the two banged wheels causing an instant puncture for Arthur and sent the Monegasque spinning up the famous hill of Eau Rouge and Raidillon.
Fortunately, with some excellent car control of Arthur, he did a full 360-degree spin and kept the car facing in the right direction and had a slow lap to the pits on hand to change his punctured right rear tyre.
He then amazingly made a fight back up the field with assistance from the late safety car being deployed on Lap 16, he recovered with some impressive overtakes from dead last in P16 to P11 come the end of the 25 Lap Feature Race.
The pace was there once again for Arthur Leclerc and for the DAMS team, unfortunate luck in qualifying was the main killer for the team this weekend in Spa-Francorchamps.
Arthur Leclerc recounts his weekend in Belgium:
“It was an unfortunate weekend for me, qualifying was frustrating as we could’ve been much higher on the grid if the rain held off a bit longer or if we had a better pit lane position.”
“An engine issue limited my performance in the Sprint Race, but I still made up several positions to take P9.”
Today, I was hit on the entry of Eau Rouge and sent into a scary spin. Luckily I kept it out of the wall and was able to continue, although we had to pit with a puncture.”
“We didn’t give up and continued to push, eventually taking P11 at the flag.”
“We were one place out of the points in both races, which was a shame, but we’ll look to have a positive end to the season when the championship resumes in late August.”
Image: DAMS
