F1 | Leclerc: “Disappointed. When you can get a 2nd place, you have to take it”

It wasn't the Bahrain Grand Prix that Charles Leclerc had hoped for, who only finished the first race of the season in fourth place. Only because the Monegasque believed he had the potential to finish in second place, ahead of Sergio Perez's Red Bull, but balance problems with the front brakes complicated his race right from the start, making it effectively impossible to fight for the podium.

After a convincing start, in which the Ferrari driver managed to maintain the second place he had achieved in qualifying, balance problems became evident right from the start, especially when braking at turn 10, one of the most difficult on the track, where it is necessary to combine the steering and braking phase.

Being also slightly downhill, these elements put the front under stress, with the risk of locking, which is why we tend to shift the balance towards the rear axle.

However, even by moving the braking management parameters towards the rear, Leclerc was unable to avoid lock-ups, especially in the first laps, when he had to deal with a problem that progressively worsened.

“For the first 9 and 10 laps I couldn't tackle turn 10, even though I had the braking distribution moved towards the rear, I ended up blocking every lap. It was a frustrating race, because we've waited a long time for this race, I've wanted to show what we're capable of for a long time, but we didn't succeed because on my part I had settings that weren't what I wanted. We have to understand what went wrong, we have to make sure it doesn't happen again,” the Ferrarista explained to Sky, illustrating the problems. According to the engineers' data, at a certain point in the race the temperature difference at the front even reached one hundred degrees.

Although the situation then stabilized, in reality the fault was never resolved, having to live with it for the rest of the race until the checkered flag. During the Grand Prix, in fact, he opened up on the radio several times to explain that the car was tending to the right, making it difficult to predict how it would behave under braking.

“I had to manage throughout the race, even though in the first ten laps it got progressively worse. That's why I made so many mistakes. I tried to anticipate braking, but when I tried to anticipate braking the problem got bigger until I got stuck again. After ten laps the problem stabilized, I knew about the problem and I knew how to brake, but the feeling was horrible.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24 Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

As he had anticipated the day before, Red Bull or, rather, Max Verstappen's RB20 was able to enjoy a concrete advantage in the race, which then materialized with a gap of around 25 seconds over Carlos Sainz. The situation is different regarding the other Anglo-Austrian car, that of Sergio Perez, who according to Leclerc was beatable today, especially bearing in mind that he started behind him.

Ferrari was banking on this race, also because, considering the rather complete work carried out in the tests with various race simulations, it had arrived well prepared for the weekend: “It's horrible, when there are races like these where you have a problem, you have the impression to drive badly whatever you do. I came to lockup seven times in turn 10, each time the brakes behaved differently, I had to ride until the end of the race with the balance of the brakes in completely the wrong places. We brought the car back in the end, but I'm disappointed. We had all these days to prepare for the race, I felt optimistic inside, but unfortunately we can't see what was possible today, the problem slowed us down quite a bit”, said the Cavallino driver.

“There are other satisfactions, I'm not happy. I am very disappointed today. When we can bring a second place home, we have to bring it. We maximized what we had, but what we had wasn't in the right place, so,” Leclerc later added when asked if he was satisfied with having managed to achieve fourth place despite the problems.