Charles Leclerc has conceded that Ferrari’s most recent Formula 1 upgrades have delivered unintended “limitations” to its car amid a challenging Austrian Grand Prix.
Ferrari began the ongoing campaign as Red Bull’s closest challenger with two victories in eight races, but the last three rounds have proven to be less straightforward.
Although the marque reacted to its sudden slump in Canada with an accelerated update package to Barcelona, Ferrari once again lagged behind its rivals in Spielberg.
Leclerc’s prospects at the Red Bull Ring were compromised from the outset as he sustained front wing damage when he was sandwiched between two cars at Turn 1.
The Monegasque was unable to recover to the points on an ambitious four-stop strategy and he has held Sergio Perez accountable over their minor opening lap clash.
“Taking that corner in three is almost impossible,” Leclerc, who came home in 11th place, expressed.
“I tried to avoid the problems, but Oscar [Piastri] is not to blame because he did not know what was happening to my right, on the inside of the corner.
“Perez, however, may think that taking that corner in three is not easy to exit without problems.
“However, he continued and instead I damaged the wing and had to return to the pits. This affected my race.”
Leclerc took solace in team-mate Carlos Sainz capitalising on Max Verstappen and Lando Norris colliding to return Ferrari to score a podium and collect some points.
Meanwhile, Leclerc revealed that he and Sainz were using alternative set-ups on the SF-24 as the Maranello-based squad endeavours to understand its developments.
“Carlos’ podium helped the team score points for the Constructors,” Leclerc added.
“And we managed to collect a lot of data because we had two cars with quite different set-ups, even if I didn’t feel very comfortable.”
Sainz has insisted that Ferrari’s upgrades have reintroduced bouncing at high-speed and Leclerc has concurred that the revamped package has triggered restrictions.
“It is true that the update package has brought the expected load, we can see it from the data, but there are limitations that we must analyse and try to resolve,” he said.
“In F1 there are few coincidences, since we introduced this package we have taken a step forward, following the numbers.
“But now we have to resolve these limitations because we have been struggling for two weekends.”
However, Leclerc isn’t hopeful Ferrari can have a solution to improve matters at Silverstone this weekend, adding: “We still haven’t found a solution to improve things”.
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