Ferrari won’t ask Charles Leclerc to rein in his aggressive approach to qualifying

Miami, Ferrari defends Charles Leclerc
Nineteen pole positions aren’t scored by chance, at just 25 years old. Charles Leclerc is the man who has managed to push the limits of Ferrari a little further. A magic that often happens, but not always: yesterday, at the Miami International Autodrome in Florida, USA, the Monegasque driver ended his Q3 against the barriers after a spin at turn 7. With his usual self-critical attitude, the driver of the Maranello team considered the mistake “unacceptable”, especially since he had also made one during the second free practice session for the Miami Grand Prix, in the same area.

The team, as it should be, defended their lead man. They did so first with Frederic Vasseur and then with Senior Performance Engineer Jock Clear. The Briton followed the team principal’s line: it’s better to have a driver who always pushes than one who settles for less than the absolute maximum performance.

Jock Clear’s words
“In some ways this maybe is a reflection of his mindset when he’s up against a car that is demonstrably quicker than his. It’s a sort of ‘I’m just going to have to make the difference myself’. Which, of course, physics ultimately catches you out” – Jock Clear explained in a recent interview ahead of the Miami event – “We’re not going to say to him, ‘look, calm down Charles’, because over the course of a year his qualifying is outstanding and that puts him in a very strong position for a lot of races, as he did last weekend, clearly. But the car’s been relatively quite nice here. It’s not been a car they had real struggles with this weekend. I think he’s felt the opportunity for another pole position to be honest and maybe he just got a bit ahead of himself.” – the English senior performance engineer pointed out.

Components changed “for safety”
Jock Clear then explained the changes Scuderia Ferrari made to Charles Leclerc’s SF-23 single-seater following the crash which was suffered by the Monegasque driver in the final stages of Q3: “We went in backwards so rear wing, we changed the gearbox and obviously the floor was damaged so we changed the floor and rear suspension,” said Jock Clear.

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“None of which caused a problem in terms of penalties or our pool of gearboxes or anything. So we’re comfortable with that. But obviously from a from a safety point of view, we have to change everything and then take it back to the factory, check it all. If you watch the video, he ends up pointing straight and then it’s almost like he thinks ‘no, I think I’ll go in the other way’. He was going quite quickly at the time, I think it might have been a bit of self-preservation. He had a bit of a bit of a bang the day before going in front-wards and I don’t think he wanted to repeat that.” – Jock Clear concluded.