Charles Leclerc’s woes multiplied on the opening day of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as he suffered the consequences of meals poisoning.
The Ferrari driver, who attended a meal together with his fellow drivers on Thursday night, revealed he suffered a sleepless night time afterwards.
“It began, sadly, final night time the place I obtained meals poisoned and couldn’t sleep all of the night time,” Leclerc advised the official F1 channel. “I’m so drained, I simply need to sleep now. So it wasn’t really easy.”
Leclerc stated he discovered the motivation to take part within the first apply session as a result of he was as a result of drive alongside his youthful brother Arthur, who took over Carlos Sainz Jnr’s automobile for the opening hour.
“This morning I didn’t really feel like I needed to drive,” stated Leclerc, “however clearly the large motivation of the day was doing the FP1 with my youthful brother.
“It is a dream that got here true right now for each of us, for all of our household that travelled all the best way from Monaco to see that. It was a really emotional second. I positively needed to put the helmets on very early as a result of I additionally was emotional.”
Nonetheless he suffered one other setback when the session started. “Sadly, as quickly as we fired up the automobile, we noticed that there was an issue with the power storage.”
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The workforce needed to change the battery in his automobile, triggering an automated 10-place grid penalty as he has exceeded the utmost quantity he’s allowed to make use of this 12 months. The event is a severe blow to Ferrari, who’re in search of to overturn a 21-point deficit to McLaren to clinch the constructors’ championship in Sunday’s closing race.
“Plenty of issues had been going by means of my head,” stated Leclerc. “First, am I going to drive this FP1 with my brother, which is a novel alternative. And clearly additionally the championship. That makes our weekend much more tough.
“However that doesn’t demotivate me in any respect. I really feel a bit of bit higher tonight already.
“I’ll have an excellent night time’s sleep and I’ll come again tomorrow with the battery absolutely recharged – I’m not attempting to play a sport with the phrases! – and hopefully we’ll have an excellent day tomorrow after which have an incredible restoration on Sunday.”
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