Charles Leclerc Explains Ferrari’s Hustle to Find “Lost Pace” Post Monaco Following Q2 Exit at the British GP

Ferrari’s performances since its Monaco GP victory have been rather abysmal with a double DNF in Canada and several other issues in Spain and Austria. To top that, Charles Leclerc faced another tricky qualifying at the British GP and had to bow out in Q2 itself. The Monegasque was certainly not happy with the performance of his SF-24 and explained how Ferrari is hustling to find its “lost pace”.

Speaking to the media after qualifying in Silverstone, Leclerc said, “I won’t go into too much detail, but we certainly lost a bit of performance from Monaco onwards. We are looking into it. This is also why we are doing all these tests.”

Both Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were doing comparative tests during Friday practice to gather data on the Imola and Barcelona spec upgrades that the Maranello outfit had introduced. They finally zeroed in to retain the Imola spec version of the SF-24.

However, heading into the British GP qualifying, this test program did not help Leclerc hone his car setup in the right window. On top of that, the changeable weather conditions added an element of surprise to further hassle the Monegasque driver.

In a chaotic qualifying session with conditions changing dynamically, Leclerc could not put in a quick enough lap time to qualify for Q3. He also made a mistake exiting the Becketts corner, which cost him further as Lance Stroll beat the #16 Ferrari by 0.159 seconds.

Regardless, Leclerc admitted that they are struggling as a whole on their car’s performance, relative to McLaren, Red Bull, and even Mercedes. Since the Monaco GP, the Italian outfit has only been on the podium once in Austria, courtesy of a late-race collision that promoted Sainz to P3.

How has Ferrari lost so much ground after winning two races in 2024?

Ferrari had started the season in the best possible manner, being the second-fastest team behind Red Bull. They benefitted massively whenever the Milton Keynes outfit struggled and courtesy of that consistency, earned two Grand Prix wins in Australia and Monaco.

However, the Maranello outfit seems to have lost ground to its rivals like McLaren and Mercedes in the developmental war. Both teams had started 2024 at completely different stages relative to Ferrari. While McLaren had a decent start to the season, the Silver Arrows had their fair share of struggles to understand the W15.

However, McLaren’s major upgrade package in Miami boosted the MCL38 into a race-winning car as they started to edge out Red Bull and Ferrari regularly. Meanwhile, Mercedes also made similar steps with minor upgrades at Imola, Monaco, and the Canadian GP weekends to iron out the issues it faced with the W15’s drivability across high and low-speed corners.

Since then, both Mercedes and McLaren have regularly edged out Ferrari in the ongoing triple header, during both the qualifying and race trim. As a result, Ferrari needs to find a solution to return to early season form, or else they are under threat of losing its second place in the constructors’ standings.