Charles Leclerc has reflected on a difficult race for Ferrari, as poor pace and strategy cost the team dearly at the F1 Australian GP.
Leclerc’s race demonstrated the improvement needed at the Scuderia despite optimism in the off-season and pre-season testing.
The SF-25 languished behind the Mercedes of George Russell for the entire afternoon. Instead, Monegasque was relegated to battle in the mid top ten.
He and the team were guilty of unforced errors, as Yuki Tsunoda charged past after a mistake. The team then hopelessly gambled on weather conditions, resulting in both cars finishing in 8th and 10th respectively.
Speaking after the race, Leclerc admitted a significant amount of points had been lost due to poor strategy calls.
Charles Leclerc: Ferrari ‘not fast enough’
Leclerc admitted Ferrari lacked speed at Albert Park, and the team failed to take advantage of the rain to move up the order.
“It was definitely a missed opportunity. I mean, especially in those conditions when it’s changing and that you don’t have the pace, it’s there that you got to score the points and and we didn’t today.
“We just… we were not fast enough at the beginning of the race when the race was kind of boring, and then once it mattered to make the right choice, we didn’t. But the first one to blame is my mistake out of Turn 11 because this I lost four positions or five positions, I think, and from that mistake, then it puts us on the back foot.
“And if you look three or four positions in front, then we are third or fourth, which I think was what could be done. But it’s the way it is.”
“About today I don’t think we’ve learned more than what we knew yesterday. I mean today, it’s such particular conditions that it’s very difficult to take anything out of.”
More concerning for Ferrari was the gap to the McLaren of Lando Norris and Red Bull of Max Verstappen. He finished 19 seconds behind the top two drivers.
“We were definitely very off in terms of pace compared to the McLarens and Max, so we’ll look into it, but yes, for sure we were struggling today and the remediate, I mean we were pretty similar to the Mercedes in front, but that was it.
“Then McLaren and Red Bull were so much faster, so there’s a lot of work to be done.”
Feature Image Credit: @ScuderiaFerrari on X
