Charles Leclerc: “It’s not a good day unfortunately”
Fourth at the start of the Grand Prix, but ultimately third after starting from pole position, the Monegasque said he was disappointed with the final result, particularly in view of the victory of Mercedes, a car the Ferrari driver thought he could beat on Sunday.
Hope will have been short-lived for Charles Leclerc. Surprisingly second in qualifying on Saturday and inheriting pole position after Max Verstappen’s penalty for using a fourth thermal engine, the Monegasque unfortunately couldn’t hold onto the lead of the Grand Prix for very long.
A difficult race
From the third lap, British driver Lewis Hamilton comes out well of the hairpin of La Source, takes the slipstream of the Ferrari, and, with the help of his DRS, takes hold of the lead. Later in the Grand Prix, Leclerc will lose his second place to the other Mercedes in the game of strategies before giving way to Oscar Piastri’s McLaren on the 36th lap. Finally on the podium following George Russell’s disqualification, despite being the winner yesterday, Leclerc draws a negative assessment of this race and the pace of his car.
The only ones we thought we were on the same level with, that is the Mercedes, they had a little more. I think fourth place was what I thought was the best possible result, with two McLarens ahead and a Red Bull. But once again, what doesn’t make me so happy today is that we have two Mercedes and a McLaren ahead. The Mercedes with whom we thought we were on par. So it’s worse than expected.
Despite an intense battle at the front, Leclerc regrets the lack of competitiveness of his car, relegated to fourth place in terms of performance, behind McLaren, Red Bull and now Mercedes, preventing the Italian team from truly joining the fight.
« It’s good to see that everyone is so close. But unfortunately, we are still the fourth fastest team and the top three are constantly changing. But we are still behind them on par with Mercedes. So yes, we just need more pace.
Ferrari must absolutely find performance again, it was the second force at the beginning of the season, chaining podiums and aiming for victory. However, when it comes to taking stock of his season, Leclerc is satisfied with the results obtained.
The first half was very good, I think we couldn’t have hoped for better, we maximized the potential of the car. In the last two races, we focused again on maximizing the results.
A lot of data therefore seems to be analyzed within the Maranello team in order to optimize the performance of the car to the maximum, with a pace that they hope to regain in the second part of the season.
« I think we did it, but not fast enough as I said. So that’s where we really need to focus and take a step forward for the second half if we want to get better results.
Hours of work are planned for Ferrari engineers in the coming days so that the team can regularly regain the top positions.
