Charles Leclerc has explained how the abundance of giant kerbs at the Imola circuit could be blunting the progress from Ferrari’s recent Formula 1 upgrade package.
Ferrari’s return to home soil with the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix coincided with the squad introducing its much-anticipated initial updates to its overhauled SF-24 car.
The Italian marque is endeavouring to bridge the remaining deficit to Red Bull and the signs appeared promising as Leclerc topped the opening two practice sessions.
But while Ferrari once again showed encouraging pace during the final practice hour, Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz were unable to sustain that once it counted.
Max Verstappen rebounded from Red Bull’s earlier woes to take a record-equalling eighth consecutive pole position, with Leclerc also ending up behind the McLarens.
Although Leclerc has conceded his two-tenth margin to Verstappen was worse than he’d anticipated, he asserts that Ferrari is still learning about its revised machine.
“We need to wait and see a few races before judging them because we might not be running in the optimum window for this new package and all of this,” Leclerc said.
“So I’m sure there is more potential to unlock. Was today worse than expected? Probably a little bit, we expected to be a bit closer.
“However, a season is still long, we still have ideas [on] how to extract more this package and I‘m sure we will in the next few races and it will be crucial for the rest of the season.”
Leclerc also pointed to the importance of the kerbs in nailing a lap at Imola as being a unique factor that was taking on more importance than the gains from updates.
Video comparisons between the top three teams exhibited that Verstappen’s RB20 and McLaren’s MCL38 could absorb the various kerbs much better than the Ferrari.
“It’s a bit more of a twisty track, with a lot of kerb riding, which when you are on a kerb, whatever you do in terms of aero, whatever, the small differences are a bit less obvious, so it might not be the best track to look at the upgrades, if a car is really, really good on kerb riding here it might make a bit more of a difference than an upgrade, aero wise,” he expanded.
“So that’s what I meant when I said that Imola we might not see the full potential of the upgrades we brought.”
Leclerc remains hopeful that a return to conventional tracks and the chance to continue adapting its set-up to the revised car will witness Ferrari unlock more potential.
“I think as always when you put a new package on the car it always requires one or two races in order to find the optimum window of this package to set up the car in a way it performs its best, so there will be this learning we will have in the next few races and this should bring us to be closer to extract the maximum out of it,” he reasoned.
“We’ll work on this for the next race and hopefully this will make us go back in front of McLaren.”
However, there are positives to take as Leclerc underlined that Ferrari’s modifications had delivered on track what the team had expected based on the simulator data.
“Everything we expected from this upgrade we got, so the numbers confirmed what we were expecting,” the Monegasque, who will start the race in third, concluded.
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