BAKU: Charles Leclerc blasted himself as "stupid" and "useless" for the crash on Saturday that wrecked his hopes of taking pole position for Ferrari at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The 21-year-old Monegasque, in his fourth outing for the Italian team, said he misjudged his speed into the castle corner where he lost control and crashed.
"I deserve what happened today," he said. "I am very, very sad for what happened, but I deserved it. I have been very stupid, as I said on the radio. I've calmed down, but I still think I've been stupid. This does not change.
"Now, we will push to learn from this and come back stronger and, hopefully, we'll have a very good race tomorrow."
On his Twitter account, he wrote: "No excuses. I've been useless. I will push to have a better tomorrow. Sorry to all the people supporting us and even more to the whole team that deserved so much better."
Until he crashed, Leclerc was the fastest driver in practice and up to then in qualifying -– and he believed he was fast enough to take pole position.
But after his accident, the second during qualifying which was extended to nearly two hours because of the accidents and track repairs, it was the Mercedes pair who dominated with Valtteri Bottas taking his eighth career pole ahead of championship leader Lewis Hamilton.
"I don't want to say anything stupid, but after looking at FP1, FP2, FP3 and Q1, pole was possible today and I threw all that potential in the bin, so I'm very disappointed," added Leclerc.
"I just braked as much as I did on the soft, but obviously I was on the medium and I just locked up," he said.
"I don't want it to be misunderstood, there is no problem with the tyres, it's just myself. So, I'm very disappointed.
"You can definitely overtake here and I will push for that tomorrow, but for the next three or four hours I will be beating myself up."