Charles Leclerc’s season has been in a downward spiral since he won the Monaco GP in May, and his woes continued in Silverstone on Saturday. After losing further ground to his teammate Carlos Sainz and rivals, Leclerc comes out to talk about Ferrari’s failed attempt at maximizing the car’s performance.
“We are just struggling a lot at the moment. I felt like yesterday [Friday] we learned a good amount for the team by splitting the cars”, said Leclerc (as per Motorsport Week).
However, changing the setup overnight and then driving it for the first time in dry conditions in Qualifying hampered his one-lap pace.
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Leclerc added, “That comes also with the fact that you are not really optimizing your weekend and focusing on performance only. Obviously, today we lose the Q3 by a tenth. And it was the first time I was driving with this configuration on the dry after FP3 in the wet.”
The Ferrari driver also explained that his car’s set-up will favor the long run more, which will be his plan heading into the British GP. However, he will start from P11 after losing out on Q3 in Qualifying, bringing an end to a rather underwhelming session in Silverstone for the 26-year-old.
Leclerc will be hoping for a stronger race-pace on Sunday, as will Sainz who starts four places ahead of the Monegasque.
Carlos Sainz reveals Ferrari’s Achilles heel
The first triple header of the season, which started in Barcelona, followed by Austria and now Silverstone, all feature tracks which have several high-speed corners. And for Ferrari, this is a weakness.
Sainz knows this, and conceded to his team’s inferiority to the likes of McLaren and Mercedes after Qualifying in Britain. He wasn’t happy with his P7, and admitted that it wasn’t where he wanted to finish.
“I’m convinced tomorrow we will recover” #BritishGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/G6aOkZUKUS
— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) July 6, 2024
After the session, he said, “It’s clearly a weak track for us given the amount of high speed and how much we’ve been struggling recently in this type of corners where you carry a lot of speed.”
Sainz further explained that he didn’t have a lot of time left to turn things around in Q3 because he had troubles on the out lap. The Spaniard, however, is confident of making up a couple of positions and finishing in the top five on Sunday.
