Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur contends Charles Leclerc’s recent Formula 1 errors have derived from attempting to compensate for the team’s dip in competitiveness.
Leclerc was named as a potential title challenger when he ended his home race hoodoo with a win in Monaco which closed him to 31 points behind Max Verstappen.
However, Ferrari has been unable to sustain that momentum since then as accelerated updates in Spain introduced unintended bouncing through high-speed corners.
The Italian marque’s dip has also coincided with Leclerc’s season hitting a slump as he has attained a pitiful 12 points across the past four rounds since Monte Carlo.
The Monegasque racer rued overdriving in Q3 in Austria as he qualified out of position relative to his outright pace and then incurred wing damage on the opening lap.
Leclerc’s dismal run continued at Silverstone as a mid-weekend reversion to the pre-Barcelona SF-24 led to a Q2 exit, while an ill-timed Intermediate gamble backfired.
But Vasseur has insisted that Ferrari has to harbour some blame for the regression in performance which has prompted more mistakes to creep into Leclerc’s driving.
“First we have to avoid to try to draw a generic conclusion on what’s happened,” Vasseur said. “We need to have a deep look on everything.
“I think the car, the last two races, was at least not easy to drive. He was asking a lot to the drivers, mainly for yesterday, that Charles had a new package on Friday.
“He has to jump into the car. We didn’t do the FP3 with the wet, and he had to go in qualifying with a car that he didn’t drive before.
“He was in very good shape until Turn 13. I don’t know if we spoke together about this yesterday, that he was faster than [George] Russell [polesitter] until Turn 13.
“But for sure, I think that we were really at the limit of the car, and the car was not easy to drive in this condition, that we are doing more mistakes perhaps than when it’s under control.
“And it’s true that as soon as you have a kind of bad momentum, or let’s call it like this, that you have the feeling that you have to compensate.
“This is a mistake from the team, from the drivers, from everybody, because you can’t compensate.
“Basically, you have to be at the limit. It means that if something is going a bit less good, that you can’t do more than what you were doing before.”
Leclerc had climbed up into seventh behind team-mate Carlos Sainz when the team and driver decided to anticipate the increasing rain with a move to Intermediates.
But while it would transpire to be the wrong call as the track conditions remained stable at that stage, Vasseur is adamant Ferrari was right to take a risk with Leclerc.
“I think it’s probably part of the reason the call today on the strategy, is that starting P11, he had a very good start, but he came back behind [Lance] Stroll,” he added.
“He lost 10 seconds behind Stroll.
“And at one stage, when you are 15 seconds off Carlos [Sainz] or [Max] Verstappen, you know that if you don’t do something mega, you won’t come back.
“And it’s probably part of the issue. But I had a long discussion with Charles. We agreed on this. And we’ll come back to the reasons.”
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