Charles Leclerc admitted “not one lap gave me hope” that Ferrari could pull off a recovery at the Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix following a dismal qualifying session.
The Monegasque scraped through into Q3 at the Lusail International Circuit, but 10th was all he could muster, finding himself outqualified by Pierre Gasly’s Alpine.
Leclerc suffered hugely during the Sprint Race earlier in the day too, failing to make up any ground and finishing 13th, having started ninth.
Ferrari Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was, for the second day in a row, knocked out of Q1, compounding a depressing day for the Italian marque.
After qualifying, Leclerc felt his first run in Q3 provided a semblance of positivity, but he was left searching for answers as to why the SF-25 has been so poor.
“It was incredibly difficult,” he told media including Motorsport Week. “I mean, the whole weekend has been unbelievably difficult. The car is really, really difficult to drive and, yeah, it’s just frustrating.
“I mean, the second lap in Q3 was a really good one, but that’s only good enough for P10 and that is, once again, very frustrating.”
Leclerc also spun during Q3, compounding his frustrations, something he put down to his typical ‘Hare-um Scare-um’ driving style in the latter part of qualifying.
“I took a stupid amount of risks, like I do on every single corner in Q3 to try and get P8, P9, but it was a little bit too much,” he conceded.
“Then I brought it back for Q3 and for Q3 run two that was just fine and it was a really good lap, but there wasn’t anything more in the car.”
Leclerc admits his optimism is tested by lack of Ferrari performance
Leclerc concluded that there is little more he or the personnel within Ferrari’s trackside team could or can do to improve the SF-25’s shocking lack of performance, putting it down to the circuit’s characteristics.
“It has to be [that] because we’ve tried different set-ups, we’ve tried different approaches and there’s no way out of this situation,” he said. “The car is just not fast enough.
“It’s not like we have a huge balance problem. Even though at one point the car is going to slide front or rear whenever you push it to the limit, but we just go too far to that limit to try and extract a little bit of performance and that makes it very, very, very difficult to drive the car.
“Just not enough performance and I hope that in Abu Dhabi we can come back to our level, but that wouldn’t change, obviously, the very disappointing season.
“I’m generally a very optimistic person, but I struggle to find any optimism for tomorrow. There’s not one lap this weekend that gave me the hope that things can go in the right direction.
“So a good day tomorrow will be to keep the car on track and to try and score a few points. I mean, I don’t want to go into a race thinking about taking a few points and keeping the car on track, so I’ll try to get into the top 10, but realistically and do I really believe in it? I honestly don’t.”
With many predicting a mundane and predictable race, Leclerc concluded that he thinks “exactly the same”, adding: “So that’s not a good sign for us.”
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