Charles Leclerc has conceded that Ferrari wound up “further away than anticipated” from its rivals as he qualified in fifth place for the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix.
Ferrari was aiming to rebound from a challenging outing in Canada last time out with a substantial upgrade package accelerated to this weekend’s race in Barcelona.
But while the team appeared in the mix in practice as Carlos Sainz topped FP3, Ferrari was unable to compete with McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes come qualifying.
Leclerc ended up 0.384 seconds behind Lando Norris’ pole position benchmark, with team-mate Sainz five-thousands further back as Ferrari locked out the third row.
While he was pleased with how he rebounded from his earlier practice struggles, the Monegasque lamented not having the inherent pace to trouble the teams ahead.
“I’ve had a very difficult time until quali really, until FP3 I would say,” Leclerc said. “FP1 and FP2 was extremely difficult for me.
“FP1 we had the old package, we had to obviously do the compare between the two cars which was needed.
“But on a track like Barcelona, when you lose two sets of tyres, it’s difficult because you only have one lap per set and then you lose six or seven tenths on the second time lap.
“So just being a bit late to get into the rhythm. In FP2, the car felt really out of place and the balance… I was really struggling.
“Today we changed basically, not everything, but a lot of things in the car. In FP3 I felt straight away much more at ease, however the pace is just not there.
“I’m happy in a way with the progress, with the feeling that I’ve had from yesterday to today, which I think will pay off in the race.
“I’m not happy and I’m disappointed with the pace of the car today in qualifying because we are further away than what we had anticipated.”
Leclerc has insisted that the developments Ferrari has introduced this weekend have worked as intended and suspects that track characteristics are behind its woes.
“I’m sure that the upgrade that we brought is doing what it’s supposed to do and it’s a good step forward,” Leclerc stressed.
“However, it’s always a relative sport and other teams have also brought upgrades and so then it all depends how much of a step forward everybody is doing.
“For sure there’s more optimisation with this new package that we can do, but I wouldn’t take that as an excuse. I think we are just lacking a little bit of pace this weekend.”
Having expressed that he “felt good” with the balance of his car, Leclerc admitted it would be harder to diagnose where Ferrari’s promising practice pace dissipated to.
“Let’s say that these days are a bit more difficult to analyse, but there’s still something to learn, and the car is still the same as the last few races, with a few upgrades that again is doing what it should do,” he explained. “So there’s something that we didn’t see this weekend for now, and that we’ll look into and I’m sure we’ll find it.
Leclerc has denied the Maranello-based squad has slipped behind its immediate competitors in recent weeks as he believes it underdelivered on its ultimate potential.
Asked whether he thought there was a change in the order at the top, he replied: “It’s difficult, I mean if I look at this weekend more specifically, I feel like we are more the ones to do a step, I mean to not perform as expected more than anything, because if you look at the gap between McLaren and Mercedes, it’s more or less what you would expect from the last few races.
“So I think it’s more that we didn’t perform the way we should have had this weekend, and we need to look into it.
“But there’s definitely a clear trend that McLaren is getting better and better, and especially on a track like this, which is normally reputed to be a track that is quite representative of the performance of the cars throughout the whole season, so we’ve got to work on that.”
But Leclerc was adamant that Ferrari’s uncompetitive standing meant he could not be satisfied that Max Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance looks to be at an end.
“Yeah, but it’s not really an encouragement,” he retorted. “Now there are two cars in front by three-tenths and a half, so today it’s not really encouraging for us.”
