Charles Leclerc says two races in succession in which Ferrari underperformed is not reflective of a “trend” for the Italian outfit or a failed development path.
Leclerc's triumphant Monaco win - Ferrari's second victory of the season - sparked excitement about their championship potential.
However, the buzz short-lived. In Montreal, Ferrari suffered a double retirement while the team’s performance in Barcelona last weekend was subpar relative to its front-running rivals.
Despite these setbacks, Leclerc remains optimistic. The Monegasque firmly rejects the suggestion that Ferrari's struggles are a result of a flawed development direction or wrong set-up.
“I don’t think so,” he said, speaking in Austria on Thursday. “Montreal, I think we’ve identified quite well what was going wrong, and it was more down to the tyres.
“In Barcelona, I think it was just raw pace and we’re just slower than what we expected, but I don’t think we didn’t optimise our package.
“But we’ll keep on working on ourselves, try to optimise also the new package that we have on the car.
“That obviously was the first race in Barcelona, and we still have some work to try and find something and understand a bit more these new parts that we are using now.
“However, I don’t think that the issues were the same in Montreal and Barcelona, so I don’t think it’s a trend.”
©Ferrari
Leclerc suggested that this week’s preparations at Maranello have improved Ferrari’s understanding of its SF-24 which, coupled with further fine-tuning its set-up, should help the Scuderia bridge the gap to its rivals.
“Well, I get the gap that there was from us to pole position, which was two or three tenths in Barcelona,” he said.
“However, I feel like the potential is in the car, we just need to optimise our package and then we’ll be back to where we want.
“We didn’t do that in Montreal, especially with tyres and the conditions were a bit outside of our operating window, and then in Barcelona, we were just not fast enough.
“But, again, the preparation on the simulator for this track went well, so I feel confident we’ll be back in the fight.”
©Ferrari
Leclerc says Ferrari is still working on solving its car’s relative weakness in slow-speed corners, a deficiency that was on display in Barcelona but which he believes will be mitigated this weekend by the Red Bull Ring’s layout.
“We’ve been struggling mostly with long, slow-speed corners, which here they are a little bit less, so that’s a good sign for us,” he explained.
“But we’re also working on that in order to have a better car in those corners, which I think we’ve seen some good steps forward in the last few races.
“However, we’re struggling then in the other corners. So, we’ve just got to put everything together, but we are working on it, and I’m confident it will be fine this weekend.”
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