Charles Leclerc desperate for answers: “We’re struggling, even slower than Williams” – Miami GP. Charles Leclerc questions Ferrari's form after qualifying eighth in Miami.

Eighth place confirms the struggles of a Ferrari never in proper form, with obvious limitations and extremely poor drivability: Charles Leclerc spoke to Sky Sport, pleading for the prompt arrival of updates and mentioning “something strange that happened to the car,” something that could be related to the Sprint crash.

The performance is inadequate: up front Max Verstappen is battling with the McLarens and Mercedes, while the Ferraris watch from afar. Ferrari doesn’t even show up to the fight among the top teams, and in Miami qualifying the SF-25s vanish. Lewis Hamilton goes out in Q2, Charles Leclerc makes it through and manages to reach Q3, but not without a few close calls.

Charles Leclerc wants to investigate: “Something happened to the car”
The Monegasque driver analyzed Saturday’s tough qualifying with Mara Sangiorgio. “Today in qualifying something strange happened on my side, I don’t know what it was, but something happened and we need to investigate the car,” he explained. “In Q1 we were completely off in terms of balance, but it’s not like we made any major changes. We have to review everything a bit because it wasn’t an easy day.”

The hints seem to point to something that may have occurred during the reconstruction of the car after the Sprint crash. “Could that rebuild have affected the result? I don’t want to say that right now,” Charles commented cautiously. “But we did make some changes: either those changes had a much bigger impact than we thought – in which case we need to understand – or there’s an error somewhere. We’ll see, for now I don’t want to jump to conclusions because the mechanics did an incredible job to recover the day.”

Charles Leclerc begs for updates to fix Ferrari’s main weakness
He closed by expressing hope for Fred Vasseur’s team’s upcoming developments. Some updates will arrive already in Imola, but the most important package is expected in Barcelona. “How badly do we need updates? It’s very difficult, even today when I finished my lap I felt like I had really extracted everything from the car. There’s nothing more. Already in Q2 I struggled massively to get into Q3, today the car is what it is.”

“It’s turning out to be a difficult weekend, on a track like this we’re even behind Williams in a normal qualifying,” the Ferrari driver noted regretfully. The main weak point of the car is clear: “We really struggle a lot in the slow corners – I hope the updates will help us.”