F1 | Leclerc: “There is no particular problem, we are just not fast”

A year ago, just on the eve of the Zandvoort weekend, Charles Leclerc, commenting on Red Bull’s stellar moment, reiterated that it would be almost impossible for anyone to match the performance of the Milton Keynes team before 2026.
“I remember, and I have to say that things are changing very quickly,” Leclerc admitted, “which is quite unusual because in Formula 1 when you have to recover such a big advantage over a team it takes a long time. But we have seen this year how McLaren has managed to make big steps forward very quickly, and I have to admit that I was surprised. Mercedes has also improved in the last few races, while unfortunately we have had a bit more difficulty, but we are working on it.”

Ferrari will not bring any new features to the track at Zandvoort, everything is postponed until the Italian Grand Prix. Leclerc is sailing by sight, he is aware that he will not have a car at his disposal that will allow him to aim for the maximum objective, but the end of the difficult central phase of the season could be near…
“I don’t expect that from this race we will return to the level of performance we had up to Monaco,” Charles clarified, “now we no longer have that pace. However, in the last two races, before the break, we managed to optimise what we had available, bringing home the maximum number of points possible. This is the objective we can aim for until we have the updates available, then we hope to be able to get back into the game.”

“It’s a question of performance,” Leclerc continued. “If we analyse Budapest or Spa, we see that our car is fine, it’s not that we have a particular problem. We know that there is a bit of bouncing in some places, and for this reason we have to compromise, sacrificing performance. It’s not that there is a particular problem, we are simply not fast enough.”

The departure of technical director Enrico Cardile also occurred in this scenario, a departure that Leclerc does not see as a potential problem at this time.
“We will not change our approach,” he clarified. “There is a lot of inertia in a team like Ferrari, everything has been defined very clearly, we know the objectives. So I don’t think much will change in the short term, we still have the same vision of what our weak points are and what our solutions are.”