Charles Leclerc is adamant that Ferrari has now acquired a “deeper understanding” of the bouncing issue that has hampered its recent competitiveness in Formula 1.
Ferrari eradicated the capricious tendencies that undermined the SF-24’s predecessor last winter to assemble a package that emerged as Red Bull’s main competitor.
But having closed the gap to Red Bull to 24 points with Leclerc’s win in Monaco, Ferrari has since regressed in the pecking order and dropped to third behind McLaren.
The marque’s struggles have been attributed to an upgrade package in Spain, which comprised a revamped floor that has triggered excessive bouncing at high speed.
Ferrari opted to revert to the pre-Barcelona specification to tackle Silverstone’s high-speed corners, while a revision was introduced in Hungary to temper the problem.
However, an underwhelming run in Belgium – where Leclerc was disappointed to be third – has prompted the squad to concede that a larger-scale measure is required.
Nevertheless, Leclerc, who sampled aggressive set-ups in a bid to help cure Ferrari’s woes, believes it still made genuine progress with its most recent developments.
“From Spain onwards, I think this was more the turning point where we brought something on the car, which the numbers were there,” Leclerc told Autosport.
“However, it induced quite a lot of bouncing that we’ve been struggling with.
“And on my side, specifically, I went very aggressive in the last four races with set-up, especially, trying to find solutions for that.
“I’ve always been [aiming] to go for the last hundredths, and I think this is the approach that pays off whenever things are as they should be.
“Whenever you have a car, that is bouncing, for example, you cannot go too close to the limit because the car is doing more unpredictable things, and you’ve got to keep more margin.
“Which is something that I know I’m a bit… yes, it’s not my approach, and so always, I’m going to pay a little bit more of the price whenever these things happen.
“However, I don’t think that this was the main issue in the last few races. It was more about putting the car in very extreme places in order to get something out of it and to understand.
“That was the main reason for the lack of performance in the last few races.
“I will put that mostly on bouncing. The bouncing is what created the inconsistencies that we have seen in the last few races, and made us struggle a bit more than before that.”
Leclerc has drawn comparisons between the tests that he has trialled in 2024 and the experiments that enabled Ferrari to make a late-season breakthrough last term.
“I remember last year we had two races like that, and it started in Zandvoort where we decided, okay, maybe Zandvoort is not going to be the race for us,” he added.
“But we want to learn as much as possible in order to get better after that.
“I’m sure that this is the same process we have gone through in the last three, four races.
“However, the negative point about it is that we’ve lost three, four races instead of two last year.
“But I believe that that gave us a much deeper understanding of what was happening, and I’m confident to say that we’ve learned a lot.”
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