For the Emilia-Romagna event, Ferrari had arrived at the first of two home races fielding considerable attention given its comprehensive first upgrade package was being unleashed.
While it led the way in Friday practice last weekend, it fell behind Red Bull and McLaren in both qualifying and the race.
But Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was adamant that “if we do 1-2 in quali, we do 1-2 in the race”. Leclerc, meanwhile, felt “the race pace was quite strong – we [just] lacked in qualifying”.
After ending up fourth in that session behind Max Verstappen and McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, Leclerc initially directed blame towards having “the most margin for improvement in the first sector during qualifying” compared to his rivals.
This, he said, was regarding something he felt had been happening “the past few” events. That suggested an extension of his early-2024 problem with nailing tyre preparation for qualifying laps.
But post-race, Leclerc opened up on where he felt Ferrari’s weekend had gone awry – putting the blame squarely on Ferrari’s electrical energy deployment settings at a track where top speed is significantly rewarded.
“For some reason we had a slightly different power strategy compared to McLaren and Red Bull,” Leclerc said. “We lost everything on the run down to Turn 2.”
Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, 3rd position, waves from the podium
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
When asked about Leclerc’s comments, suggesting it was something the Monegasque driver wanted out there, Vasseur was rather more circumspect.
“It was true [in qualifying], but for different reasons,” said the Frenchman. “Mainly because Max had a mega slipstream from the start-and-finish line to Turn 1.
“But it’s true that he had a better speed until Turn 1 on the quali lap, that we need to change our approach, to do [things] differently.”
Given Leclerc’s insistence that the problem had occurred at previous events, we can use car GPS data to see if this claim stacks up.
At Imola, Leclerc gave away nearly 4mph to Verstappen while starting his fastest flying lap in qualifying and on this was also 6.2mph down in top speed comparison.
But here Verstappen must be discounted because, as Vasseur highlights, he was receiving a significant tow gain from Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas.
Compared to the McLarens, the data shows Leclerc was 2.5mph down at the start of the lap and 2mph down…
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