Charles Leclerc struggled to find the right answers, but not many are on offer at the moment for Ferrari.
Speaking with the official Formula 1 channel following a surprising elimination in Q2, the Ferrari driver lamented a frustrating state of play for the team at the moment. Leclerc has endured a difficult stretch of performances in the weeks since his victory at the Monaco Grand Prix which saw the Monegasque driver finally break through with a win at home, despite Ferrari bringing a series of upgrades to the SF-24. He finished out of the points in the Canadian Grand Prix and after a fifth-place finish in Barcelona, Lecler brought home only two points from Austria, both of which came from a seventh-place finish in the F1 Sprint Race at Red Bull Ring.
That run may continue on Sunday, as Leclerc will start in P11 in what he calls a “slow” car.
We are just slow. We are just really slow at the moment and we have a lot of inconsistencies with the car,” said Leclerc to F1TV. “I don’t think it quite helps that we are trying to also… we are trying to just assess the situation we are in at the moment and try to understand which are the directions in which we need to push into.”
The driver noted that the team tried some different configurations in practice, to try and unlock the answer to the questions they faced with the SF-24. While Leclerc noted that the decision offered some potential solutions for Ferrari, it was not enough to unlock the time he needed to reach Q3.
“I felt like yesterday, by splitting the cars [with pre and post-Barcelona configurations], we understood a good amount to use for the future,” described Leclerc. “However, that means that maybe you don’t optimise your whole weekend as you are focused on just trying to learn, and when you are speaking about a tenth to go to Q3, it’s all about small details. So at the moment we are just struggling with the situation we are in, and I hope we can bounce back as soon as possible.”
Leclerc compared the strategy to a similar decision Ferrari made a year ago. Last season saw the Scuderia struggling during the summer, and trying different configurations at the Dutch Grand Prix helped the team improve down the stretch.
“I think last year we did that in Zandvoort, where it was really a turning point of the season and we did well,” said Leclerc. “We shouldn’t over-panic, but it is true that now this difficult time has been there for longer than last year, so we’ve really got to react now and I hope that from next race onwards we can re-optimise the weekend like we did at the beginning of the season.”
Things were a bit better for teammate Carlos Sainz Jr., who advanced to the third segment of qualifying and will start Sunday’s British Grand Prix up in seventh, but Ferrari seems on the back foot compared with some of their rivals at the moment.
Perhaps adding to the frustration is that this weekend may present a missed opportunity for the Scuderia. With Sergio Pérez starting at the back of the grid, and Max Verstappen set to start fourth, Ferrari could have taken a big step towards Red Bull at the front of the grid.
Instead, they are still looking for answers to what Leclerc calls a “slow” race car.