Charles Leclerc says Ferrari needs to make set-up changes to its SF1000 else its British Grand Prix will be a “huge challenge” due to its lack of race pace.
Ferrari has endured a troubled start to the delayed 2020 campaign and holds only fifth in the Constructors’ Championship, with Leclerc’s podium in Austria accounting for 18 of its 27 points.
Leclerc showed greater one-lap speed during Friday practice in extremely hot conditions at Silverstone as he classified fourth, within three-tenths of pacesetter Lance Stroll.
But the Monegasque was more concerned with the speed of the SF1000 across longer runs.
“The race pace we have been struggling massively,” he said.
“Qualifying pace a bit better than expected, this is good. We’ve taken quite a radical approach with our downforce level so it seems to pay off in qualifying but it doesn’t in the race.
“We need to analyse the data and see what we can do tomorrow. We can still change quite a lot of things so we’ll try to understand what we can change to maybe sacrifice some of the qualifying pace to be better in the race.”
Leclerc, who spun exiting The Loop in FP2, added that: “The balance [meant it was] extremely hard to drive, very, very difficult not to do a mistake so we definitely need to change something on that.
“Otherwise doing that many laps during the race with this balance will be a huge challenge.”
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