Leclerc endured a difficult weekend in Montreal
Charles Leclerc says that the Ferrari power unit issue that spoiled his Canadian GP made him a “sitting duck” in the first part of the race.
When a safety car came out the Monegasque driver lost a lot of time in the pits having the PU reset, and the team then took a gamble by sending him out on slick tyres while everyone else switched to fresh intermediates.
After struggling around for a couple of laps he was forced to pit again for intermediates, and having been lapped by the leaders his car was eventually retired by the team.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Leclerc when asked by this writer about the PU issue.
“Obviously we were losing a second. I mean, at first I think it was six-tenths, but then some laps, it was 1.2s, sometimes it was 1.5s, sometimes it was one second. So every time I was going on power, I didn’t know what I will get.
“It was first of all very difficult to drive, very frustrating, because in the straights I would get overtaken by everybody, and very annoying, because I had like 10 or 15 switches per lap to change, to try and reset everything and to try to make it work.
“But in the first part of the race, I think we did quite a good job managing that. And because we were in very wet conditions, or wet conditions, we could recover in corners. So I was still believing we could finish in the points. But then as soon as it dried up, I was a sitting duck in the straights.”
Leclerc admitted that the distraction of the switch adjustments didn’t make life easy.
“Actually, I found it a bit better when it was fully wet. The tricky part was then it was half dry/half wet. You’ve got to look at your steering wheel, and there you’ve got only one line. And if you are off by two or three or five centimetres, you are you are done. So that was very tricky.”
Leclerc conceded that while the PU issue was more frustrating than the unsuccessful tyre choice.
“It felt annoying, but at the end, that was the best we could do at that point,” he said. “I knew we will finish out of the points whatever happened with that issue, so we had to try something with the slicks.
“I was more frustrated about the whole situation and the engine performance in the straights than the actual choice, because if that was working out, maybe that was our only chance to maybe finish ninth, 10th.
“And without that working out, or staying in the position we were in before, we will have lost any points.”
Leclerc admitted that stopping the car was the logical choice: “It was quite frustrating as well, but I knew the race was over by that time, the only thing was I wasn’t feeling really happy in the car, because I had so much dust on my mirrors that I couldn’t see anything, and I just didn’t want to get in the way of people that were fighting for the lead.
“So that was the only situation I was in at the end, but I knew that it was finished by that time.”
Leclerc says the team has to bounce back from the disappointing Montreal weekend.
“We still have some work to do, and obviously, on a weekend like this we need to be on it and maximising all the points.
“I think that’s what we have done extremely well until now. Today with the engine issue I don’t think we could have maximised much more, but these are the things that we need to look at, and be on it.”
Leclerc also referenced the lack of pace in qualifying, which he says was not related to being on used tyres at the end of Q2: “I think the biggest problem was mostly the fact that we weren’t fast, whatever laps we were doing, on whatever tyres we were slow,” he said.
“And this we’ve got to look into it. I think it’s more tyre preparation once again, because we have seen some really good surprises of some teams, and some others that weren’t as good, including us, compared to what we would expect. So yeah, we’ll look into it.”
Adam Cooper F1 