| door Shanna Lutgert
It is difficult for Charles Leclerc to keep the glass half full after the difficult Miami Grand Prix. The Monegask couldn’t get the car started with the yellow tyre, he was stuck behind Kevin Magnussen, and the hard tire didn’t make things much better later on. It seemed to go from bad to worse for Leclerc and that resulted in a number of critical statements from him. The SF-23 really needs to improve in the race.
After Leclerc crashed hard in Q3 of qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix, he had to start the race from seventh place. After the lights went out and the race started, it actually looked like 57 laps of pain for the Monegask. The 25-year-old was stuck several times behind Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, the tires seemed to have no grip, and really didn’t want to cut through the field. “We have a lot of work to do, really a lot. We have a car that only allows the tires to work properly in a narrow window,” Leclerc muses the Italian branch of Motorsport.com.
“If you drive in the ideal conditions, the feeling is pretty good, but as soon as you go outside it (the window, ed.), it becomes very difficult,” the Monegask continues. “With the mediums, at the start of the race, I couldn’t get the car to start. Nothing, zero. Then I had to be careful not to slip the front tires because the first stint had to be long, and that affected my whole race. After that things went a little better with the hard tyres, but we have to work hard to get a more consistent car, especially on race day.”
Leclerc left Miami with headaches: ‘It was more of a phenomenon on Sunday than the rest of the weekend’
The tires are often a problem for Ferrari, but the SF-23 now seemed really eager to eat up the front tires as the race continued. It deprived Leclerc of the opportunity to attack. In addition to the problems getting the tires in the correct working window, Leclerc suffered a lot in the fast corners due to multiple contacts with the ground. “There were a lot of problems today. Now we’re going to look at the whole car, because I think something was wrong. I say that mainly because the car hit the ground a lot in the fast corners. It was more of a phenomenon today than the rest of the weekend,” explains the Ferrari driver.
“That’s why we need to understand. In addition, the tire window is very small for us and as soon as we go out we have an extremely difficult time. So we all have to look at that,” Leclerc continued. It is therefore not easy to keep the glass half full. “It is very difficult to understand our situation. In qualifying we are fighting, while in the race we can only accept being overtaken by the others in order to manage the tires well and get the most out of what we have at the moment.’
In any case, there are still updates waiting for Ferrari, with which they want to get more out of the car now that Formula 1 enters the European season. “It’s kind of a mentality that’s hard to have. But we are not giving up and hopefully the updates can help us take a good step forward. Then qualifying is important at Imola because it is difficult to overtake. So we’ll see, but the priority is to improve the race pace.” The next race on the calendar is therefore Ferrari’s home race, in Imola.
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