Charles Leclerc, Ferrari’s golden boy had an emotional home win in Monaco a few weeks ago, but ever since then has been facing issues getting podiums or sometimes even coming in points.
His P5 in Spain was the only race he scored points in from the last four races, with retirement in Canada and a P11 and P14 in Austria and Great Britain respectively, the Monegasque has described his situation as “Worse than a nightmare”
The ‘Bad Momentum’ of Charles Leclerc
Ferrari had brought in a new upgrade package since the Spanish Grand Prix to increase the downforce, which was in a way successful. The package was able to do what it was meant to, however, the suspension of the car is not able to handle the new additional downforce, causing immense bouncing in high-speed corners. This thus hinders the chance of the Ferrari’s to score valuable points to move up in both the championships.
To Leclerc’s dismay, Eddie Jordan commented in an interview with FSS:
“The foundation is gone… And I am struggling to find why or where that speed is gone that he showed so clearly.
Charles Leclerc even commented and said:
“It’s a tricky situation that we are in at the moment. The upgrade brought us the numbers we were expecting but it also brought us quite a lot of bouncing in the high speed and at a track like this we decided it was probably better having a bit less performance but having more the consistency and I think it was the right choice.”
Over the four races, the team experimented with various setups for both drivers, however, it has been Charles Leclerc on the receiving end of the disappointing results. Fred Vasseur, the Tifosi team principal explained the reasons behind his struggles at Silverstone over the weekend, driving an unfamiliar car setup in difficult conditions in a Ferrari that is proving “not easy” to handle.
On top of that, the Ferrari team principal added that because the team is looking to help the Monegasque, there is an element in which they are looking to “compensate” for their form – but he explained why this is a “mistake”. Overall, they plan on doing a deep analysis to develop a succinct solution that does not compensate for various variables.
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Charles Leclerc added:
“We’ve lost some performance since Monaco, as a matter of fact, and we are looking into it; that’s also why we are doing all these tests… We came to the conclusion that it was the right choice to come back for this weekend mostly because of bouncing and we’ll take the right decision for the future very soon.”
It is important to consider that up to the Monaco Grand Prix, there was only a 31-point gap between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, while the gap has now increased to a 105-point gap, pushing Leclerc down to third in the driver’s championship.
Carlos Sainz taking advantage of Charles Leclerc’s troubles
Carlos Sainz is going to leave Ferrari by the end of the 2024 season to make way for Lewis Hamilton. However, that has not demotivated him from trying to maximize his points and race finishes. Even after missing a race due to his appendix surgery, he has caught up and is fourth in the driver’s championship behind his teammate by 4 points.
Both the drivers have fared a win this season, however, with Leclerc’s misfortune with mismanaged and poor setups costing his performance, Sainz has been showing consistency and keeping Scuderia’s second place in the constructors’ afloat.
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Sainz commented on the new setup by saying:
“From the beginning of the year, we already had a bit of bouncing so it is still an intrinsic weakness, but the new one was clearly worse than the old one on Silverstone.”
Despite that, Sainz was able to score a P5 and the fastest lap with a last-lap pitstop.
With Hungary as the next race, the team expects to keep the new set-up due to the lack of high-speed corners on the circuit, but for the Belgian Grand Prix, they plan on returning to the Imola pre-upgrade setup, however, it will still be 2 tough races for Ferrari before the break.
Rohit Kumar