Charles Leclerc finished fifth in the Sprint Race at Silverstone after a challenging Saturday morning for the Ferrari driver. Despite showing competitive pace during the race, the Monegasque admitted that Ferrari is still making gradual progress in solving the issues that have affected his confidence behind the wheel, although the improvements are arriving more slowly than he would like.
Good, but not quite enough
Silverstone’s Sprint Race proved to be another demanding session for Charles Leclerc. The Ferrari driver spent much of the race battling with Max Verstappen, George Russell and Oscar Piastri in the fight just outside the podium positions. However, after taking the chequered flag, he had to settle for fifth place, losing one position compared to where he had qualified on Friday, with a poor start ultimately compromising his race.
For Ferrari’s second-highest placed driver in the championship standings, the priority now is to regain greater confidence in the SF-26 ahead of this afternoon’s Qualifying session. A stronger feeling with the car could help turn around what has so far been another difficult weekend for the Scuderia.
“Little by little we are finding things that I don’t feel comfortable with, and we’re making progress,” Charles Leclerc told Sky Sport F1 after the Sprint Race. “Unfortunately, the process is taking longer than I would like. Today things were a bit better in the race, but at the beginning I pushed the rear tyres too hard, so later on we paid the price. Overall, though, I didn’t really manage the tyres well from the start of the race either, partly because I had a very poor launch.”
What needs to change
“For this afternoon I have a good idea of what needs to change,” Charles Leclerc added. “If we can take another step forward, I’m confident that we will be able to carry that improvement to other circuits as well, because it’s more about adopting a different philosophy than anything else. I’m confident things will be better, but we’ll see just how much better.”
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