Charles Leclerc has tempered expectations regarding Ferrari’s Formula 1 updates for this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, citing that he expects “small steps”.
Ferrari will introduce a sizeable upgrade package at Imola as it bids to reduce the gap to Red Bull and maintain pace with McLaren, which won the last race in Miami.
The marque elected to utilise its remaining filming days last week to sample the new parts on the SF-24, which contains a further move towards the Red Bull concept.
However, Leclerc expects the upgrades to mark a minor improvement upon the slow-speed cornering weakness he has been candid about Ferrari possessing in 2024.
“The target overall, obviously, the upgrades are done in a way that they’ve been projected and thought about quite a long time ago,” the Monegasque driver explained.
“It’s not like we could react to the first weaknesses of the car. However, it’s just to make it a much better car all around. That was the main target.
“More than in Fiorano because, again, it was for filming purposes. It’s not like we have tested anything special.
“It was mostly on the simulator where we could see the first data and feel the first few things.
“It was small steps in the right direction. Now it’s all to be seen whether in reality we find the gains that we have seen on the simulator, which I hope we do.”
Likewise, Carlos Sainz has doubted Ferrari’s chances of being a match to Red Bull and he insists more developments are essential to tackle the team’s deficient areas.
Asked whether the step would be enough to put Ferrari on an equal footing with the Austrian outfit, Sainz replied: “I still think it’s going to be track-dependent.
“I think in Miami, it was a better-suited track for our car and we had really good pace, even though McLaren and Red Bull, maybe they were half a step in front.
“Our car felt back to normal, while in China it particularly felt really not good.
“So I think we’re going to be very track-dependent and hopefully Imola is one of those good tracks for us and we can put on a good show in front of the crowd.
“We’re going to need to keep developing for tracks like China because there’s certain corners where our car struggles right now and we need to keep moving forward in that sense.”
Leclerc echoed his team-mate’s comments about Ferrari’s track-specific competitiveness as he went from being on the fourth row in China to the front row in Miami.
Pressed to expand upon Ferrari’s difference in pace between the previous two rounds, Leclerc added: “I think it was more down to the track characteristics.
“I think in China as well, we were quite in a good place with the setup and we maximized the potential of the car.
“The nature of some corners in China made us struggle a lot more. We were losing way too much time, especially after qualifying.
“I think there was three or four-tenths in the first sector only. Which after that, if you look second and third sector, we were actually pretty quick.
“But that was too late to recover what we lost in the first sector. So I think the nature of Shanghai for some reason wasn’t very nice to our car.
“And in Miami, there weren’t those off corners where the car for some reason wouldn’t work.”
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