Charles Leclerc on Ferrari F1 struggles: “We’re passengers to the car”

Charles Leclerc says he and Lewis Hamilton are “passengers” of Ferrari’s Formula 1 car, as they can’t outperform it to get back to the podium positions.

Ferrari has had tough weekends in Baku and Singapore, where the top five eluded the Scuderia in both qualifying and the race, with the lack of pace compounded by significant braking issues at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

“From lap 8, basically, it was all about managing those brakes,” Leclerc said after finishing sixth in Singapore, while Hamilton took eighth place. “I think everybody has to manage, to a certain extent, on a track like this. But I think we were on the worst side of things and that makes it extremely difficult. Our whole race was very tricky.”

In Baku, Leclerc had let Hamilton through to give him a chance to attack the cars in front, but the Briton failed to cede the position back to his team-mate. He was scheduled to do it in Singapore instead, but worsening braking problems meant he dropped behind Leclerc anyway.

“I really don't think that this is the biggest problem of the team at the moment,” the Monegasque however insisted.

“Unfortunately, we don't have the race car to fight with the guys in front. McLaren has always had the same gap on us compared to the beginning of the year. Red Bull did a step from Monza and had the same level of McLaren. Mercedes now is at the same level of McLaren and Red Bull, and then there's us.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Shameem Fahath / Motorsport Network

“It's not easy, obviously, because you want to fight for better positions. But at the moment, it just feels like we're kind of passengers to the car and we cannot extract much more.”

The ‘passenger’ feeling probably extends to the SF-25’s behaviour, which Leclerc described as understeery, yet “still very snappy and unpredictable”, after qualifying.

Hence his pessimism regarding the last six rounds of the campaign: “The picture we've seen this weekend is going to be what the rest of the season looks like for us.”

This is difficult to swallow for the 27-time polesitter and eight-time grand prix winner, who had not experienced such a lack of performance since the 2021 season – especially after Ferrari missed out to McLaren by 14 points for the 2024 constructors’ title.

“Obviously, coming from a year like last year, where you are fighting for the world constructors’ championship and then you come here with high expectations, you come low of your expectations from the beginning and you don't even see a progression throughout the year, it's not easy,” Leclerc admitted, though he reiterated his unwavering drive to overcome this hardship.

“It takes a lot of energy, but that doesn't demotivate me." he said. "It motivates me, if anything, much more to try and turn the situation around.”