After considering challenging Max Verstappen for the Formula 1 title following his splendid victory at his home Grand Prix in Monaco, Charles Leclerc (and Ferrari) emerges battered from the first triple-header of the 2024 F1 season, with the Monegasque driver scoring only twelve points in the last four races. This is too little for a driver who was consistently fighting for the podium at the beginning of the championship and now finds himself licking his wounds after yet another disappointment.
Charles Leclerc raises the white flag
“I don’t feel good, now it’s too much,” commented Charles Leclerc, visibly downcast and disheartened by the final result in a GP of Silverstone that started badly and ended worse.
The Monegasque driver had already swallowed the bitter pill of the surprising elimination in Q2 in qualifying, knocked out by the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll. In the race, the situation didn’t improve much, with the ill-advised decision to switch to intermediates prematurely, effectively ending his hopes of a comeback before even halfway through the race.
“It’s been too many races now, I don’t know what to say anymore when I come here (to interviews),” added the Monegasque at the end of the British Grand Prix – “We just need to reset everything as a team, but yes, there’s always a different reason why things don’t work. This makes analysis and progress more difficult. The last four races have been worse than a nightmare. It’s a difficult situation we’re in at the moment. The updates have given us the numbers we expected, but also quite a bit of bouncing at high speeds.” – he admitted.
“For a track like this, we decided it might be better to have a bit less performance but more consistency, and I believe it was the right choice. In the future, we will analyze all the data we have so far with the two packages and try to understand if there’s something we haven’t figured out yet.”
Finally, speaking about the strategic disaster, the Monegasque driver stated, “It was clearly the wrong strategy. Obviously, with the message I received and the information I had in the car, I thought it was the right one.”
“In turn 15, it was raining quite a bit. I was told that the rain would come very strong on this lap, so I stopped to try to anticipate it. However, the rain came eight or nine laps later. From that moment on, our race was over. Very frustrating, another weekend to forget, and there are starting to be many.” – Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc concluded following the Silverstone race.
Source: f1ingenerale
