Charles Leclerc taking Lewis Hamilton approach in Ferrari SF-24 setup reveal

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc

Just like Lewis Hamilton did previously at Mercedes, Charles Leclerc said he has been using extreme setups amid a difficult spell for himself and Ferrari.

While a Barcelona upgrade produced the numbers which Ferrari expected, what could not be anticipated in the windtunnel was the bouncing issues which came with the upgrade, triggering Ferrari to return to their Imola-spec SF-24 last time out at the British Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc has been going extreme with Ferrari setup

Since Leclerc’s victory in Monaco, which followed the Imola round, he has not featured on the podium, with team-mate Carlos Sainz’s P3 in Austria the best it has got for Ferrari since Monte Carlo, though Max Verstappen and Lando Norris colliding while battling for the Austrian GP lead offered a major helping hand.

Leclerc has attracted the strongest attention though in an alarming slump in form following that Monaco win, though the 26-year-old, while speaking to media ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, revealed a potential major contributing factor.

Leclerc claimed that since the Spanish GP, he has been using extreme setups on the SF-24 to help Ferrari get back on track. This is something which Hamilton did during Mercedes’ initial struggles in the ground-effect era, which at points saw him outperformed by team-mate George Russell.

“I think our rate of improvement until Monaco was really good,” said Leclerc. “And I have said many times before that we were probably the team that have made most progress back from Monza maybe last year to Monaco this year, it was a really good rate of improvement.

“Then went to Montreal, where we had some issues with the power unit in the race, which obviously cost us a good result. And then after, I think the turning point was from Barcelona onwards, where we obviously had an upgrade that induced quite a bit more bouncing.

“And on my side, especially from that moment onwards, I’ve been quite extreme with change of setup in order to try and find a way around those issues, which you pay the price with the results. However, you gain a lot of knowledge about those issues, and I think will help us bounce back from this weekend onwards.

“For us, it’s obviously very important to use as little races as possible to understand those issues, but I think now we understood better those issues and I’m confident that it will be better from this race onward in order to maximise the points here and Spa as well and for the rest of the season.”

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Leclerc was quizzed on how successful he expects that bounce back to form for Ferrari to be and whether it means taking the fight to Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren.

“I think it’s a very difficult question to answer because from one weekend to the other, when you look at the top two, three teams, it’s always a matter of a tenth or two maximum,” he said, “so to be precise in where exactly we are going to be, is very difficult.

“But we will target the highest possible and if we optimise everything, there’s no reason why we won’t come back to a level of performance we’ve seen at the beginning of the year. So that is the target.

“But I think, for me, the important point is just to have a clean weekend, not going too extreme with the setup, just in order for me to understand and know what the car is going to be like when I’m taking the pole in qualifying.

“And if we have that, then we will be capable to challenge right at the front.”

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