Charles Leclerc goes into the summer break with mixed feelings about the performance and speed of the SF-24 car and the position Ferrari currently has against its main competitors. While he finished the race in a relatively positive fourth place and was later promoted to P3 after the disqualification of George Russell, the Monégasque is “not so happy” about the whole situation he and the team find themselves in.
Recently, Ferrari and Mercedes seemed to be tied closely together in their performance and results, at least in Spain, Austria and Hungary. However, the Silver Arrows dominated the race at the Belgian Grand Prix and were clearly the fastest on track alongside McLaren, which is something that definitely does not play into Leclerc’s hands.
The 26-year-old started on pole, but he was never likely to hold on to that over the 44-lap distance. In the end, he had to fend off Verstappen and Norris to be P4 on the road.
“Yeah, on a normal race, dry track, it’s very difficult to keep them behind on a track like this,” the Ferrari driver noted in the case of Mercedes’ expected speed.
“We did a good job to keep Max [Verstappen] and Lando [Norris] at the end behind, but fourth was the best we could hope for today.”
Although he managed to stay in the fight at the front for quite a long time, Leclerc doesn’t see that as a great improvement: “It wasn’t, because if it was a Red Bull in front, then I think it would have been a positive weekend. But now it was a Mercedes, which we thought we were on a par with them, and they had the edge on us.
“So, yeah, I don’t consider this result a very positive one.”
Leclerc didn’t expect to see Mercedes at the front at Spa and instead bet on other rivals beforehand: “I personally thought that McLaren had a huge advantage of pace for this weekend, which I saw a little bit less [on Sunday]. I mean, they were still the fastest, probably with Red Bull and Mercedes today, but I thought McLaren had the edge.
“But yeah, I mean, it’s good to see that everybody is so close, but unfortunately we are still the fourth fastest team, and the top three keep changing. But we are consistently behind them or on a par with Mercedes. So, yeah, we just need more pace,” he noted.
In the case of his own results and what he was expecting coming into the race, it pretty much came true — though of course, starting from pole position, one always at least partly wishes for the win.
“I think fourth was what I thought would be the best result possible today, with two McLaren in front and one Red Bull. But again, that’s what makes me not so happy about today, is that we have two Mercedes and one McLaren in front, and the Mercedes, we thought that we were on a par with them. So it’s worse than expected.”
When we look at the tyre strategy, the most brilliant one during the Belgian Grand Prix this year turned out to be Russell’s one stop — which is something that was discussed as a possibility even in the Ferrari team.
“It was one of our plans, but I knew that it was very, very, very unlikely for me to do so,” Leclerc admitted.
After seeing he could get potentially undercut by multiple cars in the race, Leclerc said over the team radio that if they’re going to get undercut, then let’s go long. However, he stopped very shortly after, while his teammate Carlos Sainz went on a longer stint. When looking back, would it be better to do the same as Sainz or even Russell?
“Yes, but it’s very, very difficult to know at that point, because when you have so many cars, obviously we were in a position where we were second on track, which when you are getting undercut by one car, two cars, three cars, four cars, it starts to be quite tricky, and you take a lot of risks. So it was just better to align ourselves to the other strategy.
“We didn’t even know what was the hard [tyre] like, because we hadn’t run it before the race. So all of this, I don’t think it’s fair to say that we made a mistake at that point, and I understood the point of view of the team.
“So I just felt like the road pace was not good enough. When it’s like this, unfortunately, you can do whatever you want with the strategy, but you’re always going to lose places, which we are just not fast enough,” the Monégasque repeated his complaint about the overall pace of the car.
He continued to explain why it was unlikely for him to really go with the one pit stop strategy: “When you are in front to keep going and to get under the car by three, four cars and just lose so many positions if the one-stop doesn’t work, it was just better to align ourselves with the guys behind.
“But we knew it wasn’t too far, but I think they just had more pace, so they made the one-stop work because they were super, super strong today. But we had it on our part. It was just not possible in our race situation,” he concluded.
