Charles Leclerc was damning of his performance in Formula 1‘s British Grand Prix, saying his “lack of pace” rather than his early tyre gamble cost him chance of a good result.
The Ferrari driver went into the race at Silverstone potentially capable of springing a good result, given the encouraging pace of the SF-25 over the course of the weekend.
But the chaotic and changeable weather conditions contributed to a wretched race for the Monegasque, who finished 14th, the last of the cars that finished on the lead lap.
Leclerc was asked if his decision to switch to Slicks at the end of the formation lap was correct, but intimated that he felt it made little difference, given his underwhelming showing.
“I mean, for sure this did not help, however we were kind of nowhere the whole race,” he told media including Motorsport Week. “And when I say nowhere, it’s like really nowhere.
“I was a second off and on top of that I was doing lots of mistakes.
“I was really struggling to keep the car on track. So, it was an incredibly difficult day.
“I need to analyse what was going on. What did I do in terms of tools, in terms of set-up, in terms of driving that made everything worse. Because today was extremely difficult.”
Leclerc takes responsibility for wrong tyre call
Leclerc did confirm that the choice of dry compounds so early was perhaps not the wisest decision to make, but took full responsibility for it, saying he misjudged how long it would take for the surface to dry.
“No, I’m not happy with the decision. That was my decision,” he said. “I thought the first and second sector was kind of for slicks. The third sector was wet.
“But I expected it, I had seen it. But I expected the track to dry up a lot quicker. It did not.
“And I think we were quite a few to have done that mistake of thinking that it would dry up quickly. This is part of the reason why we had a bad race.
“But I would say that the biggest part was the lack of pace. And on that I want the answers before going back home. So, I’ll work hard to try and understand what was going on.”
One of Leclerc’s biggest personal plus points in 2025 has been his ability to largely outperform Hamilton in the SF-25, managing to make good of the tricky challenger more so than the seven-time World Champion.
But whilst Hamilton was also unhappy with his own race – letting rip at the SF-25’s performance in wet weather conditions – Leclerc admitted that he had been by far the weakest of the two Ferrari drivers over the weekend.
“I didn’t see Lewis’ race, but for sure he was much, much stronger than me,” he acknowledged.
“The only positive I would say is that whenever you’ve got Lewis in the same car. And being much faster than me today.
“There are definitely some things that I would learn from a day like this. Because when you struggle as a team and the two drivers are struggling.
“It’s more difficult to know what’s going wrong. There we’ve got an example of extreme in both ways.
“Because until now, I kept saying that we were maximising the package that we had. But clearly today, I did not maximise the package that I had, at least on the Sunday.
“Very often on the Saturday I think we felt like we left something on the table. Very often coming to Sunday we always put everything together.
“And since the beginning of the season I don’t have much more to say. But today clearly I left points on the table. That’s not nice.”
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