Leclerc admits suffering from food poisoning before ‘emotional’ day in Abu Dhabi driving alongside his brother Arthur

Charles Leclerc experienced an “emotional” day as the action got under way at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with the Monegasque attempting to bounce back from food poisoning so that he could drive alongside his brother in Free Practice 1 – before then being hit with a grid penalty.

It proved to be an eventful Friday for Leclerc at the Yas Marina Circuit as the Ferrari driver made history by becoming team mates with younger sibling Arthur during the first practice hour.

FP2: Norris leads team mate Piastri and Hulkenberg during second practice in Abu Dhabi

But the elder Leclerc’s appearance in the session was delayed amid a suspected issue with the car – and it was confirmed at the end of the hour that he will serve a 10-place grid drop in Sunday’s race after receiving a new energy store.

The 27-year-old then later revealed that he had been suffering from food poisoning on Thursday night, leaving him feeling unwell ahead of an important day for him, both personally and in terms of Ferrari’s constructors’ championship bid.

Asked about his emotions after the day – with his penalty now seemingly making the task of closing the 21-point gap to McLaren even more challenging – Leclerc said: “Yeah, it makes our weekend more difficult.

2024 Abu Dhabi GP FP1: Arthur Leclerc joins his brother Charles in first practice run with Ferrari

“It all started unfortunately last night when I got food poisoned and couldn’t sleep all the night which… I’m so tired, I just want to sleep now. It wasn’t so easy, even this morning I didn’t feel like I wanted to drive, but obviously the huge motivation of the day was doing the FP1 with my younger brother.

“This is a dream that [has] come true today for both of us, for all of our family that travelled all the way from Monaco to see that and it was a very emotional moment. I definitely had to put the helmet on very early because I also was emotional.

HIGHLIGHTS: Relive the action from Abu Dhabi FP2 as McLaren’s Norris and Piastri head the field

“And then that’s where everything started to go wrong unfortunately because as soon as we fired up the car, we saw that there was a problem with the energy store. [There were] lots of things going through my head – first, am I going to drive this FP1 with my brother which is a unique opportunity, and obviously also the championship.

“That makes our weekend a lot more difficult, but that doesn’t demotivate me at all. I feel a little bit better tonight already, I’ll have a good night’s sleep and I’ll come back tomorrow with a battery fully recharged. Hopefully we’ll have a great day tomorrow and then have an amazing recovery on Sunday.”

Leclerc also acknowledged the fact that this being Carlos Sainz’s last weekend as his team mate at Ferrari heightened the emotions further.

Leclerc reveals he was hit with food poisoning on Thursday ahead of ‘emotional’ Friday in Abu Dhabi

“[That is] another thing that adds to this up-and-down weekend, emotionally speaking,” the eight-time race winner said. “We really want to finish on a high. This morning we ended up watching FP1 together and we were a bit sad both of us for what had happened, because obviously we rely on each other in trying to win this constructors’ and we really want to end these four years together in the best possible way.

“But sometimes things happen outside of our control and that’s what happened today. But we’ve had an amazing relationship, amazing four years, and we’ll give it all until the very last lap in order to end these four years together in the best possible way.”

FP1: Leclerc sets the pace during first practice in Abu Dhabi as several rookies join the action

And in terms of that constructors’ fight with McLaren – the team that topped the timesheets in FP2 – Leclerc conceded: “The McLaren seems to be quicker unfortunately so for now they’ve got the upper hand, but we know that it can swing one way or the other very quickly.

“We’ve got to stay on top of everything, and it won’t be finished until the very end. As we’ve seen unfortunately today on our side, we’ve had a problem but, yeah, I’m not wishing a problem to anybody else, we’ll just focus on ourselves and try to do an amazing recovery on Sunday.”

On the other side of the garage, Sainz was pleased with his performance in second practice, having sat out the first session while Arthur Leclerc took the wheel, but admitted that Ferrari may need to find some performance overnight in order to challenge McLaren.

Sainz reckons Ferrari are ‘two/three tenths off McLaren’

“[I did] only one session, but honestly speaking I’m quite happy with the way I got up to speed,” Sainz commented. “I think on Lap 2, I was P1, so that’s always good news… It means that I’m confident with the car and I knew more or less what to tackle, how to drive it.

“Then on the soft [tyre], we had some issues. I think we’re still not extracting all of the performance as always when the track drops in temperature, and [when] we put the soft tyres on our car seems to struggle a bit more.

“We were probably not half a second off the McLaren but we are two [or] three-tenths off which is something that we need to try and recover going into tomorrow, and it’s a deficit that we carried also a bit into the long runs, so we need to make sure we find a couple of tenths tonight to put us in the battle with them for the win.”

Pushed on whether that deficit to the papaya team surprised him, Sainz answered: “No, McLaren has always been quick here in the past.

“It’s always been a track where McLaren [are quick] but also Lando [Norris]; Lando’s been very quick in Abu Dhabi before, and I think they’re always going to be a difficult team to beat. At the moment they look the strongest this weekend, so it’s going to be a tough ask to beat them.”