Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari’s underlying pace is not the issue behind the team’s recent qualifying form, pointing instead to a specific weakness in attacking kerbs during low-fuel running.
Leclerc finished fourth at the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit, having spent a long stint of the race in the lead.
But the Monegasque’s necessity to pit rendered his P1 as hollow, who required a Safety Car to make the leap into the net lead of the race.
That never came, and Andrea Kimi Antonelli was able to leapfrog the Ferrari when he eventually did pit, giving the Italian the win.
Leclerc had previously suggested that the Scuderia were prioritising race pace over any potential gains on one lap, on the belief that the former was the SF-26’s strength.
And speaking after the race in the Spanish capital, Leclerc indicated the gap to rivals is smaller than it appears once race trim is factored in.
“I really don’t think we are worse than the others,” he told media, including Motorsport Week. “I just think that, generally, our car is just a little bit weaker in qualifying than it is in the race with lower fuel.”
Leclerc singled out McLaren’s strength over the kerbs as a key factor in the weekend’s result, with Lando Norris taking pole and effectively only losing victory due to an ill-time Virtual Safety Car.
“When you’ve got to really attack the kerbs, particularly yesterday, McLaren was very, very strong, and we were a bit on the wrong side of things on that,” he said. “So, we paid the price this weekend, probably because of this. But as a whole, I always feel like we are a bit on the back foot in quali.”
Vasseur looking for improvements as F1 slim title hopes begin to slip for Ferrari
Ferrari have been the only contenders to Mercedes across the season as a whole so far, with McLaren’s resurgence coming in just the last few races.
But Leclerc’s fourth place and Lewis Hamilton’s brake-related DNF signalled a further widening of the gap by the Silver Arrows.
Team Principal Fred Vasseur offered a wider diagnosis, pointing not to Ferrari’s outright qualifying pace but to how that pace fails to build through the session.
“If you take Zandvoort and this one, the final outcome is a bit the same for us, that we had a decent pace in quali, but we didn’t put everything together on the last attempt and race pace is OK,” Vasseur said.
Vasseur said the team’s main focus needs to be on progression across qualifying segments rather than one-lap pace itself.
“If I have to put the focus on the team on something today, it will be the evolution of the pace during the quali more than the pace in quali, the evolution, the step that you can do through the session,” he said.
He pointed to the spread of drivers topping individual segments as evidence of the inconsistency.
“If you have a look on the quali, it’s true that if you have a look on the four stints in quali, one time it’s Max, one time it’s Lewis, one time it’s Kimi, one time it’s Lewis, Q1 and the four stints, and we finished the most important in P4,” Vasseur said. “This, we need to improve.”
Vasseur added that the team’s race pace, unlike its qualifying trajectory, is still encouraging.
“We need to improve because I think when you have a look at the pace during the race, the pace is there.”
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