Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc note about what they want from the Ferrari F1 car in races to come, as Frederic Vasseur adds on the Monegasque’s self-critical nature.
Ferrari hasn’t had the F1 season that they hoped for, especially after how 2024 panned out for them. Even with the arrival of Hamilton, they have been there and thereabouts. They are yet to score a win this year, where only Leclerc has managed to secure podium finishes.
They have managed to get sprint win via Hamilton, but they haven’t had the glory in the main grand prix. The Brit has spent a lot of time in adjusting after a long spell at Mercedes. The work has been humongous considering the differences between the two machines and working style.
He is happy with his driving but wants consistent balance from Ferrari as the season progress. “Not spectacular, I finished every race, other than the disqualification,” said Hamilton, reflecting on the first half. “I’m not driving that terribly. Of course, I want to continue to improve. Qualifying was looking better in Silverstone. I think we just continue to build on that.
“I’m really hoping for some improvements moving forwards. [What I want is] probably a consistent balance. A car that turns at a low speed. Just a more stable car. I think we were looking great through Silverstone. In practice, we were always right up there. Still weren’t able to fully extract everything in quali and then the race is a little bit harder, so that’s where I want to get stronger,” summed up Hamilton.
Teammate Leclerc has similar thoughts. He felt Silverstone was a letdown on his own side as well, considering how they perform well in races but didn’t do so. “I think performance, it is definitely performance that we need,” he said to media. “I think there are some upgrades coming which will cure some particular weaknesses of the car which I think will help us in some phases of the corner.
“I won’t go too much into detail but I think there are some weaknesses, we will untie them and we will try and fix them as soon as possible. It is a bit of a shame because until now, I kept saying that we were maximising the package that we had. But clearly in Silverstone, I did not maximise the package that I had, at least on the Sunday.
“Very often on the Saturday I think we felt like we left something on the table. Very often coming to Sunday we always put everything together. And since the beginning of the season I don’t have much more to say. But clearly I left points on the table. That’s not nice,” summed up Leclerc, who regretted his outburst on radio after a bad qualifying, being self-critical as he has been often.
“I’ve had my moments on the radio, and I think it is probably very funny from the outside,” he said. “But for me, frustrations run high and especially when you are passionate and want to do well, sometimes you regret things you say on the radio. But that is the way it is in the heat of the moment, it happens.”
Team boss Vasseur felt the same about the situation and Leclerc being self-critical. He doesn’t see it as a problem, even though he knows that he blames himself a bit too much at times. “You know Charles for probably 10 years or so and one of the qualities of Charles is that he’s able to blame himself,” he said. “One of the defaults of Charles is that sometimes he blames himself a bit too much.
“And as a team I appreciate a lot the fact that the driver can say, ‘OK it’s my mistake’, this is positive because it’s not bringing the team in the wrong direction and they are human, they are doing mistakes as everybody and it’s good to have the drivers able to say this. On the second part of your question, he did a real step forward in terms of race pace.
“Perhaps also with the setup of the car, it’s also going in the direction of being more difficult for the quali. But I remember perfectly that two years ago we were telling him, Charles, that ‘we are scoring points on Sunday, let’s be more focused on Sunday’, because it’s Sunday that we are scoring points, at 23 we did a 5 or 6 pole position and 0 win for Charles. And we were pushing him into this direction. Now we can’t tell him, but please go back to the previous situation.”
Here’s Charles Leclerc on British GP
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on British GP