Charles Leclerc revealed the reasons that left him behind Lewis Hamilton during the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula 1. The Ferrari driver admitted that he could not find confidence behind the wheel of the SF-26 in Montreal, a factor that ended up compromising his performance throughout the weekend.
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Hamilton had an advantage over his teammate both in the Sprint race and in the qualifying session for the Canadian GP. In addition, the Brit showed a stronger pace in the main race and finished in second place after overtaking Max Verstappen in the final laps, achieving his best result since joining Ferrari.
While Hamilton celebrated P2 on the podium, Leclerc crossed the finish line in fourth position, more than thirty seconds behind his teammate. Despite the significant difference, the Monegasque ruled out that the problem was related to the car setup.
“There is no part of the performance we saw today related to the setup,” Leclerc told the press. According to the driver, setup changes can represent small performance differences, but insufficient to explain the gap seen in Canada. “You can say there is a tenth in the setup, but in the end that’s not much. In Formula 1 we are talking about very small details,” said the Ferrari driver.
Leclerc highlighted that the main problem was the feeling behind the wheel and the difficulty in exploring the car’s limit during the race. The Monegasque stated that, without confidence, he could not attack in the necessary way to keep up with the pace shown by Hamilton.
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“It’s more related to my feeling and the way I drove on Sunday. When you don’t have confidence, you can’t push the car to the limit and I felt I was completely off pace,” he added.
The Monegasque driver emphasized that the situation is different from when the car has an inadequate setup, but the driver can still extract maximum performance: “It’s not like I was pushing and then could say: ‘The setup is not exactly where I wanted it.’ It was something different,” he concluded.
Before the weekend in Montreal, Hamilton had commented that he intended to change his approach after considering that simulator data had hurt him in Miami. Still, Leclerc reinforced that the teammate’s superior performance in Canada was not linked to technical differences between the two Ferrari cars.
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