Throughout the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, Charles Leclerc reveals that Ferrari has been grappling with the same trio of corners, a struggle that persisted even at Turn 9 where his Q3 crash occurred.
The Monegasque driver encountered a late fright during Q1, narrowly avoiding elimination before comfortably advancing to the pole position shootout in the subsequent session at the Zandvoort circuit located in the dunes north of Zandvoort, the Netherlands, near the North Sea coast line.
As the track gradually dried, allowing slick tires to be a viable option, Charles Leclerc’s Q3 momentum was halted when he overshot Turn 9 on his second push lap. Sliding across the wet grass, he collided with the barrier, effectively ending his session. The Monegasque, who eventually slid down to ninth place, concedes that Ferrari has consistently faced challenges with these specific three corners at the Zandvoort circuit throughout the entire Dutch weekend.
“First of all it’s one of those weekends where the car is extremely difficult to drive. Since FP1 we’ve been struggling in Turn 1, 9 and 10 and changed the car completely and honestly there’s not much that helps us in these three corners. Turn 9 and 10 is one of those corners where you go into the corner, you are releasing the brake and there is absolutely no grip in the corner for whatever reason. Then you are trusting the car on gripping again on the exit which it didn’t, and I obviously ended up in the wall.” – the Ferrari man pointed out.
Charles Leclerc has emphasized the need for the Maranello team to comprehensively grasp the reasons behind their consistent struggles across the same sequence of corners from the onset of the first free practice session: “On the one hand, there are things to understand because being on the same track and having the issue in some type of corners and some others not at all… we need to look into it and hopefully we will understand something out of it because it’s big.”
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Following yesterday’s confirmation that Scuderia Ferrari is set to develop an entirely “fresh” car for the 2024 Formula 1 championship due to glaring deficiencies in its current design, Charles Leclerc openly expresses his eagerness for the current year to come to a close.
When questioned about the statements made by the Italian side’s Technical Director Enrico Cardile, Charles Leclerc continued: “Yeah. It’s great to hear that. I can’t wait, first I’ve got a season to finish in ’23, but we can only go in another direction because honestly the car at the moment it is very, very difficult to be on the limit. We are particularly struggling this weekend, even more so than what the balance was slow us down, because we need to be so far off the limit because as soon as we get to the limit you really don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s exactly what happened in my Q3 lap, so it’s a difficult situation.”
The Monegasque has faced challenges in varying weather conditions on multiple occasions this year, encountering elimination from Q1 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona and once more missing out on Q3 in Canada. Nevertheless, he has dismissed the notion that the conditions were responsible for his mishap, opting instead to highlight the erratic performance of Ferrari’s SF-23 car as the primary cause for his Q3 incident.
“Conditions, in a way, we’ve had that plenty of times this year and I’m getting more and more comfortable and am OK with that,” he explained. It’s just the car this weekend that is extremely difficult to drive. In Formula One it’s all about anticipating and knowing what balance you’re going to get once you get into the corner, but at the moment I’m getting into the corner and I have zero idea if I’m going to have huge understeer, zero understeer, and that makes it very difficult for us. It’s been a very difficult weekend and hopefully we can have a clean race tomorrow.” – Charles Leclerc concluded.
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