Charles Leclerc does not believe Ferrari's underlying pace is the main issue behind their recent qualifying struggles. Instead, the Monegasque points to a specific weakness: attacking kerbs during low-fuel running.
Leclerc finished fourth at the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit, having led a long stint of the race. However, his P1 was rendered hollow as he had to pit. He needed a Safety Car to leap into the net lead, but it never came. Andrea Kimi Antonelli was able to jump the Ferrari when Leclerc eventually pitted, handing the Italian the win.
Leclerc had previously suggested that the Scuderia were prioritising race pace over one-lap gains, believing the SF-26's strength lay in the former. Speaking after the race in the Spanish capital, he 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-timed 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.”
Ferrari have been the only contenders to Mercedes across the season 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. He added that 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 pointed to the spread of drivers topping individual segments as evidence of inconsistency.
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