Charles Leclerc doubles down on Ferrari woes as Lewis Hamilton given food for thought
Lewis Hamilton will join Charles Leclerc at Ferrari in 2025 following his departure from Mercedes but the team aren’t heading in the direction which a seven-time world champion would want
Hamilton, 39, will team up with Leclerc for the Scuderia in 2025, replacing Carlos Sainz in a blockbuster deal which was announced in January. The move was believed to be a step back towards the top for the Mercedes icon, but after a tricky start to the current season, both Hamilton and team-mate George Russell have romped to Grand Prix wins since Ferrari’s last triumph.
Although both Leclerc and Sainz remain ahead of Hamilton and Russell in the overall driver standings, with Ferrari also ahead in the constructor’s table, Mercedes have been closing the gap. In Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Leclerc performed well and capitalised on a collision between Hamilton and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to take P4, two spots ahead of team-mate Sainz, but the Monegasque driver wasn’t wholly satisfied.
“I’m relatively happy. I mean, I’m never happy with a P4 but if you do a step back, considering the tough few races I’ve had in the last few weekends,” the 26-year-old admitted. “We came here saying we need to maximise the team points, we need to maximise the car, and I think we did that today, so on that I’m happy.”
Leclerc added: “On the other hand, I’m not happy because the performance is not where we want it to be. McLaren is quite a far bit ahead now, Red Bull was a bit closer than what we thought today. But I think we had a pretty good race pace, we were just a bit stuck because it’s a track where you cannot really overtake.”
Those comments echo his post-qualifying verdict ahead of the British Grand Prix earlier this month, as Leclerc bemoaned after going out in Q2: “We are just slow. We are just really slow at the moment and we have a lot of inconsistencies with the car.
“I don’t think it quite helps that we are trying to also… we are trying to just assess the situation we are in at the moment and try to understand which are the directions in which we need to push into. I felt like yesterday, by splitting the cars [with pre and post-upgrades], we understood a good amount to use for the future.
“However, that means that maybe you don’t optimise your whole weekend as you are focused on just trying to learn, and when you are speaking about a tenth to go to Q3, it’s all about small details. So, at the moment we are just struggling with the situation we are in, and I hope we can bounce back as soon as possible.”
( Image: Chris Putnam/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Team principal Fred Vasseur, however, insists that Ferrari are now on the right track after Budapest. “At the end, we had quite strong pace on Sunday,” Vasseur explained. “Last year, we finished 65 seconds behind Red Bull, and this weekend, we are 20 seconds behind the leader… I think, in the last 12 months, we did a decent job.
“Now, it’s not enough – it’s clear that McLaren was faster than us. And they were faster than us by two or three-tenths all the weekend. But looking after where we are coming back and the last two or three events, we did a good recovery. And now let’s be focused on the next one. We need to do a step in performance, but we are on the right way.”
Up next is the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday, Formula 1’s final race before the summer break.
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