Ferrari’s performance this season has fallen short of pre-season expectations, making Charles Leclerc’s podium finish at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix a welcome surprise, even for the Monegasque driver himself. Delivering an impressive race from lights to flag, Leclerc extended his opening stint and held off McLaren’s Lando Norris to secure third place.
SF-25 showed promising pace in Saudi Arabian GP
Despite bringing upgrades to the Bahrain Grand Prix, Ferrari has continued to wrestle with inconsistent pace and downforce issues. The tweaks failed to deliver the expected improvements, leaving the team with a temperamental car that remains difficult to fully understand.
Speaking after the race, Leclerc reflected on what he viewed as a positive outcome following a tough triple-header, particularly in contrast to the team’s qualifying woes, saying: “At least I feel like we’ve maximized absolutely everything we could have this weekend.”
“There wasn’t anything more, I think, in the car. I think we need to focus on qualifying at the moment. It’s been a very long time I haven’t been as happy with the car balance. And I feel very at ease with the car in a way that I know that I can extract the maximum out of the car more often than not.”
“But unfortunately, the car potential is just not good enough to fight for better in qualifying. But in the race, I think the good car balance had results. And I think we were all surprised by our pace in free air on the first stint. So that was really good. I think everything else was perfectly executed. Strategy was great. Pit stop have been great the whole season and also the whole last year as well. There wasn’t much more we could have done.”
Leclerc: “The car just felt good“
Leclerc’s race started with a long opening stint on the medium compound tyres before switching to hards on Lap 30 of 50. Once the front-runners completed their stops, Leclerc emerged in third and managed to stay ahead of Norris by one second to seal a well-earned podium.
When asked about tyre management and how difficult it was to maintain pace late into the race, he responded: “A little. The car just felt good. To be honest, I was struggling a lot when I was behind George with the car balance, a lot of understeer. And I hate that. And as soon as he pitted, the front came alive and the car felt a lot better. Then I could manage the fronts a little bit better and the performance came much better once I was in free air.“
Looking ahead to Miami
Leclerc acknowledged that Ferrari’s race pace has been competitive in certain conditions, but qualifying remains unpredictable. He also pointed out that the issues affecting qualifying vary from one weekend to the next, which makes it harder for the team to find a consistent solution, saying: “I think we are close on the race pace. I think free air dictates a little bit who is going to win the race. That’s always been the case. For some reason, maybe this year a little bit more than other years. And obviously, when that is the case, qualifying is more important.”
“But unfortunately, since two years, we are just struggling in qualifying to put everything together. Qualifying this weekend, the problem is that it’s not always the same issue. This weekend was four-tenths in the first three corners or three and a half tenths in the first three corners. And for the rest of the lap, we were fast. And now today in the race, actually, first sector was probably the best sector we had. So we’ve got to look at that.”
He reiterated how crucial it is to fix their qualifying issues to assure better results: “Obviously, there are answers in what we are doing and we are doing something wrong, clearly. But we’ve got to find it and we cannot lose too many races before finding it because we’re already 50 points down, I think, in the Drivers’ Championship.”
“We are not looking at it too much, but 50 points is a big number. So I don’t want to be losing more points than that in the next few races. “
