Charles Leclerc admits that his Ferrari Formula 1 team was “nowhere” at a wet Interlagos on Sunday, and he took part of the responsibility for a wrong turn on setup that didn’t pay off.
Leclerc was sixth in wet qualifying on Sunday morning, and then struggled for pace throughout the race.
He was the first driver to pit for new tyres, coming in on lap 24, and that further compromised him. Helped by issues hampering others he eventually finished fifth.
Team mate Carlos Sainz had an even tricker time, crashing in qualifying, starting from the pitlane with a new PU and gearbox, and then spinning off again in the race.
“I think I’m partly to blame for it,” Leclerc said when asked by this writer about the SF-24’s poor wet weather form.
“Because obviously we decide the setups together with the team, and today I wanted to go into that direction.
“However it was the wrong one, for sure. And today, the pace was just not there. I think in qualifying, we actually weren’t too bad. With the new tyres, low fuel, you can extract more out of the car. But in the race, we were nowhere.
“And more than being nowhere, it was extremely difficult to drive, extremely difficult to not do any mistakes. And at the end, looking at all this, the only thing we could be a little bit satisfied with is being in front of the two McLarens.
“To only lose four points in the constructors’ is big damage limitation on a weekend where they seem to be so strong. Now we need to put everything together for the last few races of the season.”
Leclerc admitted that the early pit stop call, which he prompted, was the wrong choice.
“That was a mistake,” he said. “It’s easy to be said as well that on a race like this it’s very difficult to not do any mistakes in terms of strategy, because there are so many calls that you need to do.
“And if you look, I think only the top three did no mistakes on a race like this. We were on the other side of things. We stopped, I wanted free air, so I asked the team to find free air. They boxed me that lap.
“But unfortunately, the pit entry and the pit exit time in the wet was a lot longer than what we thought.
“And I ended up in the middle of traffic with Ollie [Bearman] and Lewis [Hamilton], and from that moment, I knew that we were losing so much. Then there was a safety car. We lost like three or four positions there. So then it was a lot more difficult.”
Regarding the new track surface he said: “I think it made it very difficult. I think honestly, the tarmac this weekend wasn’t a step forward.”
Adam Cooper F1 