Leclerc had led the way after the early drivers in Q3 and set an even faster first sector time on his final run to wrap up qualifying.
But then he couldn’t even better his personal best in sector two, let alone set a time that Verstappen couldn’t match on his way to the fastest Q3 time in that part of the track for Red Bull.
It ended up costing Leclerc dearly as a purple sector in the final third meant the Ferrari driver found himself 0.021 seconds off pole as everything was turned upside down following Sergio Perez’s late spin. .
Speaking at the post-qualifying press conference at Zandvoort, Leclerc first described a Turn 10 “mistake” as the reason he fell behind Verstappen.
When asked for more details by Autosport, he replied: “I’m sure no one has done the perfect lap.
“Especially in these conditions, turns 9 and 10 are two extremely tricky corners with the tailwind and they are much more affected than anywhere else on the track.
“So it was very tricky. And then with the balance of my car, I struggled a bit in turn 10 and lost the rear end and lost about a tenth.
“To look at [the final results], if you do the perfect lap, you can get pole, but on the other hand, I’m sure Max and Carlos didn’t do the perfect lap either. So the end result is that we are P2 today.”
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
In response to a question asking if he was frustrated at not ending up on pole, Leclerc dismissed the suggestion as “obviously you always aim to be on pole”.
He added: “But other than that, looking at the gap with Max today, I didn’t expect him to come into Q3 after the Q1 and Q2 we had, which were a lot trickier. .
“But at the end of Q3 the car felt pretty good, I could push.”
Leclerc also revealed that he was “not completely comfortable with the balance of the car in the last few qualifying runs” but felt “today he felt a little better”.
“So that’s good and now I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” he continued.
Leclerc put Ferrari’s Zandvoort Q3 improvement – Verstappen went from Q2 with just one outing while the red cars needed an extra run in that segment – down to trying ‘different things on the out lap and at the end it was a little better.”
Those efforts meant he was left with “a bit of a stronger front end”, having “struggled with understeer” in previous qualifying events he previously mentioned.
“We have to work on this [further]but for the race I felt more confident so I’m a bit more confident for tomorrow,” concluded Leclerc.
