Charles Leclerc’s problems continued at the British Grand Prix last weekend. During the race at Silverstone, he suffered his second Q2 exit before finishing outside the points on Sunday. Despite his poor performance in Britain, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur doesn’t believe the Monegasque could have performed much better. As quoted by Pit Debrief, Vasseur said:,
“We have to avoid trying to draw a generic conclusion about what happened. We have to analyse everything in depth. I think the car in the last two races, at least, was not easy to drive. A lot was demanded of the drivers, and especially of Charles. On Friday he was on the new package. We didn’t do FP3 in the wet conditions, and he had to go into qualifying with a car he hadn’t driven before.“.
Listen to the disappointing radio message from Charles’ team, who failed to qualify in the top 10 https://t.co/bHaRIPHLIz
— Scuderia Fans (@ScuderiaFansF1) July 6, 2024
Indeed, Leclerc suffered much more than his Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz at the British Grand Prix. While Sainz managed to finish in a remarkable fifth place, the Monegasque driver only managed 14th place.
Despite Leclerc failing to score any points, Vasseur decided to blame the car and not the 26-year-old driver. However, while Leclerc was not at fault at Silverstone, the same cannot be said for Ferrari’s strategy team.
Ferrari made another strategic mistake with Leclerc
For most of 2024, it looked like Ferrari had put its strategic mistakes behind it. However, the 2024 British GP showed that they have not completely overcome this concern.
The Italian team attempted an aggressive move on Leclerc that failed miserably. Ferrari opted for intermediate attempts on the Monegasque’s SF24 eight laps before the rain arrived. As a result, this move completely ruined his race.
He also confessed the same to the media and said: “Yes, we did (make the wrong decision). We went with an aggressive strategy that definitely didn’t pay off. I was told that the rain would fall very heavily on the following lap, but it didn’t come until eight laps later and we destroyed the (intermediate tyres) in the meantime.”“.
“Yes, we did (wrong decision). We went with an aggressive strategy that definitely didn’t pay off. I was told that the rain would fall very heavily on the following lap, but it only rained 8 laps later and in the meantime we destroyed the intermediate tyres…” https://t.co/dtl2pHOoO9
— Clara (@leclercsletters) July 7, 2024
Despite starting from 11th position, he had hopes of scoring some points. However, Ferrari’s wrong decision made his race go from bad to worse.
In fact, this decision resulted in Leclerc being overtaken by most of the leaders. Therefore, since Ferrari made another strategic mistake at Silverstone, they must make sure to resolve these issues as soon as possible to avoid missing out on further opportunities when they can score points.
