Charles Leclerc is sure Ferrari could not fight for victory at Zandvoort as the car lacks race pace, and Monza could manifest this problem even more.
Q: You are falling further and further behind the championship leader. Obviously you are not going to give up, but what can you say about the tasks to be solved before the end of the season?
Charles Leclerc: I said back in Spa that the gap is very big. That’s why we consider each race individually and try to reach our full potential. And we’ll see what we can achieve.
Q: In Zandvoort you climbed the podium again, but could you have done more? Was there an opportunity to fight Max Verstappen for the win?
Charles Leclerc: No, we didn’t have enough pace for that. We just weren’t fast enough. Now the main efforts of the team are focused on trying to get back to the previous pace we had at the start of the season. Looks like we’ve lost it, and most importantly, we don’t have enough pace on a long series of circles.
Q: Was it you who lost speed, or did the other teams manage to speed up the race pace of their cars?
Charles Leclerc: I think everyone has improved lately, that’s for sure, but we still had some issues with the pace over the course of the race. In addition, the Mercedes drivers are now also going very fast and are also involved in the battle.
In Zandvoort they showed excellent speed, especially on the Hard compound tyres. I think at the start of the race our pace on soft tires was also good, but we were running on rolled tires and Max on new ones, so the difference in pace was about what we expected. But when we switched to Medium tires we definitely went slower than expected.
Q: Were you surprised by Mercedes’ pace?
Charles Leclerc: Yes. On the tires of the Hard composition, I was certainly surprised.
Q: What can you say about the duel with Lewis Hamilton at the end of the race? Were you able to get ahead of him without much effort?
Charles Leclerc: Yes, because Lewis started having problems because his tires were already worn out. And my car held the track better, so we were able to overtake him. And yet he managed to work perfectly with rubber until the very last lap. So it wasn’t that easy for me, but we still managed to hold on to third place.
Q: Before the Monza race – what results can we expect from you and Ferrari in Italy?
Charles Leclerc: Unfortunately this is not the best track for us. But in any case, I am happy to go there, because in Italy we always get a lot of support from the public. That’s why I’m looking forward to the race in Monza, although I foresee that there will be more difficult tasks to solve than Zandvoorte.
Source: F1 News
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