Charles Leclerc has claimed a podium finish might have been possible in the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix without the late spin that cost him numerous positions.
Ferrari experienced a nightmare outing at the season-opening race as Leclerc trailed home in eighth, while Lewis Hamilton ended up 10th on his debut with the team.
Leclerc produced a strong start to dispatch Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda to be running fifth, where he remained until the switch to slicks under a mid-race Safety Car.
But that would prove to be the point where his race began to unravel as Tsunoda passing him on the restart preceded a spin at Turn 11 as the anticipated rain arrived.
Ferrari’s delayed call to revert to Intermediates cost Leclerc more spots to leave him languishing 10th, though he overtook Hamilton and Pierre Gasly in the final laps.
Leclerc conceded Ferrari committed the wrong decisions on the pit wall, but he rued his own error losing what he considered to have been a potential top-three result.
Asked whether it was a missed opportunity for Ferrari, Leclerc told media including Motorsport Week: “Yes, for sure. It was definitely a missed opportunity.
“I mean, especially in those conditions when it’s changing and that you don’t have the pace, it’s there that you’ve got to score the points and we didn’t today.
“We were not fast enough at the beginning of the race when the race was kind of boring and then once it mattered to make the right choice, we didn’t.
“But the first one to blame is my mistake out of Turn 11 because this I’ve lost four positions or five positions, I think.
“And from that mistake, then it puts us on the back foot.
“And if you look three or four positions in front, then we are third or fourth, which I think was what could be done. So, yeah, but it’s the way it is.”
Leclerc has denied the communication between the cockpit and the pit wall should be deemed a catastrophe, despite the choice to remain on slicks on a damp track.
“This is something that we always look at and that we know is something that we need to always keep our focus on,” he reasoned.
“Whether today was particularly bad, I don’t think so. But we’ll look into it.”
Ferrari lagging behind the leaders
Even without the mistakes, Ferrari had not been in a position to contest the leading places on merit amid the SF-25’s struggles to generate pace on the Intermediates.
“We were definitely very off in terms of pace compared to the McLarens and Max [Verstappen, who finished second], so we’ll look into it,” he acknowledged.
“But yes, for sure, we were struggling today. And the tyres, the intermediates, they seemed to fall off in the first turn pretty fast.
“Yeah, I mean, we were pretty similar to the Mercedes in front, but that was it.
“Then McLaren and Red Bull were so much faster, so there’s a lot of work to be done. Why, especially in those conditions, I don’t know yet.
“But it’s been a weakness that we’ve had since quite a few years. I think we’ve been quite up and down whenever it was raining and we’ve got to work on that.”
McLaren ‘incredibly quick’ benchmark
The suspicion that McLaren’s advantage would be even more pronounced in race conditions was realised as the team dominated up until the late shower descended.
“Yeah, they were incredibly quick today,” Leclerc acknowledged as Lando Norris prevailed.
“To be completely honest, I know that they are incredibly quick because I’ve heard they are incredibly quick.
“But my engineer didn’t even tell me once the lap times of the McLaren. I think they were too far ahead.
“So I don’t exactly know whether it’s a second or a second and a half or two. I hope not two. But I’ve heard some numbers that are quite impressive.
“So we’ll have to… Now I’ll go back and look into it and try to understand where we are losing the most compared to them.”
However, Leclerc has stressed that Ferrari should be mindful not to draw conclusions about the SF-25’s potential based on the race due to the changeable conditions.
“About today, I don’t think we’ve learned more than what we knew yesterday,” he said. “Today it’s such particular conditions that it’s very difficult to take anything out of.”
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