Ferrari struggle more than Leclerc expected

Charles Leclerc has conceded to enduring a season of struggle more than he anticipated coming into the campaign.

It was during last year’s Spanish Grand Prix that Leclerc’s time with Ferrari began to unravel.

Up until that point, Leclerc had led the drivers’ championship, scoring two victories and finishing runner-up on three other occasions in the first six races to suggest he would push Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to the wire.

Despite starting from pole position at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya, Leclerc retired with a power unit problem, since when he has only won once.

This season has been a disaster for Leclerc and Ferrari, culminating in another wretched weekend in Spain where he was forced to start from the pit lane due to the unreliability of a “strange” car in qualifying that would not turn left.

Leclerc finished 11th, elevated a place by a penalty for AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda, leaving him seventh in the drivers’ standings, a staggering 128 points behind Verstappen.

“We are struggling more than I expected,” said Leclerc, who experienced unusual tyre issues during Sunday’s race which led to his SF-23 “understeering like crazy”.

Leclerc has found the car can react differently on the same compound of Pirelli tyres, leaving it hard for him and the team to know where to head with set-up, and how to dial out the issue.

“We’ve got a car that just…it’s not like I’ve got understeer in the car and I can say ‘Okay, this is a very understeery car’,” remarked Leclerc.

“I’ve got understeer on one tyre, and then on the same hard (compound), you’ve got very oversteery balance, and as a driver, you are doing exactly the same thing.

“It’s just inconsistencies but it’s very difficult to work on inconsistencies, especially when you do exactly the same thing both times.

“We’ll check what we are doing but it’s very, very difficult because even as soon as the wind changes slightly we’ve a car that changes quite a lot, so it’s very, very tricky.”

Suggesting the direction Ferrari needs to take, Leclerc added: “Where we really need to put all our focus is to try and be more often at the peak of our tyres and know how to manage them better.

“Two or three degrees makes a huge difference on balance. In Spain, we were struggling, either completely outside the window, or in the window and being happy with the car, so there’ll be a lot of work on that.

“We need to try to understand what’s going on with those tyres and put them in the right window more often.”