Charles Leclerc admitted Ferrari endured its “worst Friday of the season” at the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix, after discovering a huge pace deficit to rivals McLaren.
The Monegasque underlined the alarming gap in performance after ending both practice sessions outside the top 10 at Zandvoort, with Ferrari languishing in 14th and 15th place in FP1 before failing to make inroads in the afternoon.
Coming off the summer break, Ferrari continues its pursuit of runaway leaders McLaren after missing out on victory in Hungary. Leclerc admitted that the opportunity felt like a huge one lost — both for himself and for Ferrari’s first win of the season.
While he remains hopeful it won’t prove to be the only chance in 2025, Friday’s evidence pointed in the opposite direction. McLaren carried its dominant form into Zandvoort, while Ferrari’s struggles appeared only to deepen.
Reflecting on FP2 to the media afterwards, Leclerc could not hide his disappointment, describing the day as Ferrari’s most difficult of the season so far.
“I will sum it up as a very, very, very, very difficult Friday – probably the worst Friday of the season,” he declared. “Which is right after the holidays, so it’s a little bit of a wake-up call.
“I mean, we’ve had some difficult Fridays. Now it’s up to us to turn the situation around, but for sure, it’s not been an easy day. And the FP1 was extremely difficult. FP2 was slightly better, but still very far off where we want to be.
“I don’t expect to fully return the situation because I think McLaren is in a league of its own with Aston Martin in what was a surprise for us. But yeah, we’ll try and improve the car as there’s plenty to be done anyway.”
Ferrari baffled by corner-specific pace loss
Leclerc explained that much of Ferrari’s deficit was concentrated in just two corners, leaving the team searching for answers overnight.
“I mean, we are losing basically 90% of the time in two corners and there’s just something that our car cannot do at the moment,” he explained. “We are trying to find out why it’s so concentrated in two corners.
“Normally, that’s never the case. So yeah, we’ll work in trying to find a solution for these two corners.”
Looking ahead to Saturday, the Ferrari driver admitted expectations were hard to set, though he hoped for something of a turnaround despite the daunting gap.
“It’s a very strange season – I would have never said that I will be on pole in Budapest,” Leclerc added. “So I don’t want to really fix myself targets today because after what was a very difficult weekend, it’s not very exciting targets.
“But I’m looking forward to try and turn the situation [around] and try to make a miracle tomorrow. But it’s not going to be an easy weekend for us.”
On an equally frustrating day, team-mate Lewis Hamilton added his thoughts on the matter: “It’s not been the worst of days. I think we were making progress. We’re obviously quite far off in P1, a lot further than normal.
“First lap felt pretty decent getting back, but then it’s been a bit of a challenge from then. We made some progress over lunch, so I think we progressed, but still quite a chunk off, so we’ve got some work to do overnight.”
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