Leclerc: Ferrari current underperformance ‘worse than a nightmare’
Charles Leclerc cast a defeated figure after Sunday’s British Grand Prix, a race marked by a strategic blunder in the Ferrari camp that left the Monegasque empty-handed.
Leclerc had started the race positively, moving up from 11th on the grid to 8th on the opening lap before battling his way past Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll to seize seventh on lap 13.
While the Scuderia charger aspired to continue his progress, a light drizzle forced the Italian outfit – like its rivals – to adapt its plans.
On lap 19, Leclerc was called in to switch his medium tyres for a set of inters while the majority of the field opted to stay on slicks.
Unfortunately, the decision backfired spectacularly. Leclerc rejoined momentarily ahead of Valtteri Bottas, but the Finn quickly snatched away the position as it became clear the intermediates were the wrong choice.
Leclerc's struggles continued as he lost more time behind the Sauber. To make matters worse, when the rain finally intensified, Leclerc needed another pit stop due to the heavy wear on his initial set of inters.
"[It was] clearly the wrong [strategy],” a frustrated Leclerc admitted. ‘I'll look back into it.
“Obviously, with the decision, with the message I got and the information I had in the car, I felt like it was the right one," Leclerc explained.
"It was raining quite a lot in Turn 15. I was told that in this lap, the rain was going to be very heavy, so I stopped to try and anticipate.
"However, the rain came eight or nine laps later. That was obviously the end of our race from that moment onwards. Very frustrating, another weekend to forget, and it starts to be a lot.
"[This period] is very hard. I don't really have the words to explain it, but it's been four races that it's been worse than a nightmare. I hope we can come back soon."
Despite his decent start with his pass on Stroll, Leclerc admitted it was hard to find any positives considering his race’s disappointing result.
However, amid Ferrari’s decision to ditch its Barcelona upgrades and revert to its SF-24’s Imola specification, Leclerc noted a more consistent balance at Silverstone that offered a glimmer of hope.
©Ferrari
"It's really difficult to look at positives on days like this,” he acknowledged. “I just want to go back with the team, that we analyse the way we are making those decisions on my side, and why we were on the wrong side today.
"It's a tricky situation that we're in at the moment. The upgrades brought us the numbers that we were expecting but also brought us quite a lot of bouncing in the high-speed [corners].
"For a track like this we decided that it was probably better having a bit less performance but having more consistency, and I think that was the right choice.
"Going forward, we'll analyse all the data we had until now with the two packages and try to understand if there's anything we haven't understood yet.
"The bouncing was [better], so the consistency was better."
On a slightly brighter note, a solid drive by Carlos Sainz delivered a fifth-place finish that helped Ferrari maintain its runner-up spot in F1’s Constructors standings.
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