Charles Leclerc is hoping that his decision to run “extreme” set-ups in previous Formula 1 races will help Ferrari cure the bouncing that’s hindered its competitiveness.
Ferrari began the season as Red Bull’s closest challenger as the team claimed nine podiums and two victories in the opening eight races to sit a comfortable second.
However, Ferrari’s pace has regressed since then as a substantial update package introduced in Barcelona has prompted unintended bouncing in high-speed corners.
The Italian marque’s problems resulted in both cars using the previous-spec SF-24 at Silverstone as Carlos Sainz rued the side losing “three months” on development.
Ferrari’s plight seemed to have impacted Leclerc the most as more ragged driving and errors on the team’s side have seen him score 12 points in the last four rounds.
But the Monegasque driver has revealed that he had been willing to sacrifice his own results in the short term to help Ferrari resolve the problems it was experiencing.
“I think our rate of improvement until Monaco was really good,” Leclerc said.
“As I’ve said many times before that, we were probably the team that made most progress back from Monza maybe last year to Monaco this year was a really good rate of improvement.
“Then we went to Montreal where we had some issues with the power unit in the race which obviously cost us a good result and then after I think the turning point was from Barcelona onwards where we obviously had an upgrade that introduced quite a bit more bouncing.
“From that moment on was I’ve been quite extreme in the change of set-up in order to try and find a way around those issues, which you pay the price with the results.
“However, you gain a lot of knowledge about those issues and I think will help us bounce back from this weekend onwards.
“So I mean for us it’s obviously very important to lose as little races as possible to understand those issues, but I think we now we understood better those issues and I’m confident that it will be better from this race onward in order to maximize the points here and in Spa as well and obviously for the rest of the season.”
Ferrari is touted to have implemented tweaks to the updated floor that was triggering the bouncing as it strives to discover whether its latest parts can be salvaged.
Asked which package Ferrari will elect to run this weekend, Leclerc replied: “I’m not going to go too much into detail for now, you’ll see tomorrow obviously.
“We’ve been doing our homework pretty well and as I said by going in extreme ways in the last few races on my side with the setup I think we’ve learned many things.
“And with the week off in between the races we could take conclusions and make our choice for this weekend.”
Leclerc has admitted the slow-speed Hungaroring is not the optimum venue to test the changes, but he suspects Ferrari can gain enough data to obtain conclusions.
“I think it’s not the track where the bouncing is the most visible, however we’ve got metrics,” he explained.
“Again with the last three, four races, we’ve got things that could tell us whether we are on the right path or not. So I think it will be enough to see that.
“However, in Spa, it will be even more of a test for us.
“But I’m very confident that what we’ve learned in the last three, four races will be better for going in the future, whether we’re here or on another track. We will do a step from now on.”
But while he harbours optimism Ferrari will be back in the mix this weekend, Leclerc is cautious about predicting how competitive the Maranello-based squad will be.
“I think it’s very difficult to answer because from one weekend to the other the top two, three teams it’s always a matter of a tenth or two maximums,” he assessed.
“So to be precise in where exactly we are going to be is very difficult.
“But yeah, we’ll target the highest possible and if we optimise everything there’s no reason why we wouldn’t come back to a level of performance we’ve seen at the beginning of the year.
“So that is the target. But I think the main important point is just to have a clean weekend, not going to extremes with the set-up just in order for me to understand and know what the car is going to be like when I’m taking a corner and qualifying and if we have that then we will be capable to challenge back in the front.”
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