Charles Leclerc has denied there’s a “trend” behind Ferrari’s recent performance slump and reckons it can be back at the sharp end in Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix.
Leclerc ended his extensive win drought in Monaco last month as he claimed Ferrari’s second success this season to heighten talk surrounding a potential title battle.
However, the Italian marque has not featured on the podium since as it endured a double retirement in Canada and then trailed behind its rivals in Spain last weekend.
But Leclerc has quashed the notion that there is a link between the two and argues Ferrari’s lacklustre pace in Barcelona derived from not maximising its updated car.
Asked whether Ferrari’s struggles could be attributed to going down the wrong avenue with the set-up direction, Leclerc replied: “I don’t think so.
“Montreal, I think we’ve identified quite well what was going wrong, and it was more down to the tyres.
“In Barcelona, I think it was just raw pace and we’re just slower than what we expected, but I don’t think we didn’t optimise our package.
“Yeah, but we’ll keep on working on ourselves, try to optimise also the new package that we have on the car.
“That obviously was the first race in Barcelona, and we still have some work to try and find something and understand a bit more these new parts that we are using now.
“However, I don’t think that the issues were the same in Montreal and Barcelona, so I don’t think it’s a trend.”
Leclerc has admitted Ferrari is missing two-tenths to fight with McLaren and Red Bull on traditional circuits, but he is convinced that deficit is within the SF-24’s grasp.
“Well, I get the gap that there was from us to pole position, which was two or three tenths in Barcelona,” he said when asked what he needed to bag a win this weekend.
“However, I feel like the potential is in the car, we just need to optimise our package and then we’ll be back to where we want.
“We didn’t do that in Montreal, especially with tyres and the conditions were a bit outside of our operating window, and then in Barcelona, we were just not fast enough.
“But, again, the preparation on the simulator for this track went well, so I feel confident we’ll be back in the fight.”
Leclerc has divulged how Ferrari was spurning most of the lap time to its competitors in Barcelona through the winding, slow-speed turns situated at Turns 5 and 10.
But the Monegasque, who won in Austria in 2022, is optimistic the Red Bull Ring’s track configuration won’t serve to expose the Maranello-based squad’s weak areas.
“We’ve been struggling mostly with long, slow-speed corners, which here they are a little bit less, so that’s a good sign for us,” he explained.
“But we’re also working on that in order to have a better car in those corners, which I think we’ve seen some good steps forward in the last few races.
“However, we’re struggling then in the other corners. So, we’ve just got to put everything together, but we are working on it, and I’m confident it will be fine this weekend.”
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