Charles Leclerc’s F1 slump leads to Ferrari ‘discussions’ over poor performances

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said the team are in “permanent discussions” with Charles Leclerc, admitting topics arise of when both he and the team have made mistakes this season.

These continued talks make up part of “the life of a team”, according to Vasseur, though Leclerc and the Scuderia have undergone a dip in form after their driver’s emotional home victory at the Monaco Grand Prix back in May.

Charles Leclerc and Ferrari in ‘tough sequence’ after Monaco GP triumph

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Because of this success, Vasseur admitted Leclerc’s expectations rose for the season ahead as Ferrari looked to close down the pace of Red Bull and McLaren, but after retiring in Canada and finishing fifth in Spain, he finished outside the points in both Austria and Great Britain – having not finished outside the top four places all season prior to Monaco.

His form has since ticked back up again with a P4 finish at the Hungaroring and he was promoted to the podium at the Belgian Grand Prix prior to the summer break, following the disqualification of Mercedes’ George Russell, but Vasseur assured the team are not in a situation whereby they are looking to “finger point” for that mid-season drop-off.

“It’s not just about Charles, it’s tough for the team,” Vasseur told Formula1.com.

“After Monaco we had a tough sequence. In Canada we were not in bad shape. What is clear is the car is a bit more difficult to drive the last couple of events and the level of expectation of Charles is also a bit higher.

“It’s the life of a team, that you have up and downs. We have permanent discussions with Charles.

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“He knows the situation on our side, what we do well and what we did wrong and he knows sometimes he did some mistakes.

“But we’re not in the situation that we’re trying to put the responsibility on someone.

“We’ve been working together for years, we know each other perfectly, we know we are pushing, we know we just need to fix things.

“We are absolutely not in the situation to finger point. It’s also where it’s good to have a personal relationship.”

For Leclerc himself, he admitted the initial races saw Ferrari get everything they could out of the SF-24, but a move to “extreme setups” left him unsure how far he could push his car.

With Mercedes having appeared to have leapfrogged the Scuderia in the competitive pecking order too, he admitted they are “just not fast enough” as it stands, with work to be done if they are to improve once the season resumes.

“First half, really good, I think we couldn’t hope for better we maximised the potential of the car,” Leclerc told media including PlanetF1.com when asked to sum up the first part of the season from his perspective.

“Then we’ve had four races where we were going extreme setups from extreme setups and, for me, it was just impossible to get to quali and to know where the limit of the car was.

“We lost a lot of points, and the last two races we focused again on maximising the results, and I think we did. But [we’re] just not fast enough, so that’s where we really need to focus and to do a step further for the second half, if we want to have any better results.”

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