Leclerc said he was feeling the pressure before qualifying and that an engine change needed before it did little to calm him down.
But he delivered with style, with a lap 0.154secs faster than Piastri.
“The Monaco qualifying is always so incredibly special just because as a driver you have to put everything in it and not leave any centimetres away,” Leclerc said.
“And that means close to the wall. That means risk of crashing very, very high coming Q3. But that is what excites me.
“Whenever I get to Q3, I am so happy. As much as it is tense, I am pretty sure I have a smile on my face going around the lap, just because the feeling going around the lap is absolutely amazing.”
The pressure, he said, would not be the same before the race – he would ensure that by focusing on the start, on the strategy, and all the little details that need to go right to secure a victory.
“I cannot afford to think about how I would feel (if I won),” he said. “I have more to gain by focusing on the process of how to get there.”
He would hardly be human, though, if his mind did not at some point stray on to what went wrong the last two times he was in this position.
In 2021, he crashed on his final qualifying lap. The incident secured his pole by ensuring no one had the chance to beat him.
Ferrari checked the car over before the race and found nothing wrong. But somehow they had failed to spot a driveshaft failure and it broke as he left the pits to go to the grid.
The following year, he converted his pole into a lead at the first corner, and that should have been enough to win, even in a race that started wet and was moving to dry.
But this time Ferrari messed up their strategy, and allowed Leclerc to get passed by both Red Bulls and his team-mate Carlos Sainz, somehow converting a potential win to fourth place.
Ferrari are “a better team now”, Leclerc pointed out, a reference to the changes that have been obvious under boss Frederic Vasseur since he joined for 2023, since when he has very obviously improved many aspects of the team’s operations.
Still, though, Leclerc knows he can take nothing for granted on Sunday. The race is long and tactical, and even if overtaking is all but impossible on track, there are a myriad ways a win can be lost.
“We can only focus on what we can control,” he said. “If we don’t have a good start, we won’t keep the position into Turn One but I have had good starts recently so I am not worried.
“In the past we did not have the success we wanted but I don’t want to think about that any more and I am pretty sure we will have a good one tomorrow.”
2024-05-25 19:06:56
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