Charles Leclerc highlights major problem of Ferrari in wet conditions ever since he started with them in F1, but Frederic Vasseur plays it down for 2026.
Amid the mounting issues Ferrari has faced over the years, Leclerc pinned down a major one towards the end of F1 2025 when the Italian manufacturer struggled massively in wet conditions. All of the 2025 season, the team struggled to put up a decent fight in greasy conditions.
In fact, Leclerc highlighted a fundamental problem with Ferrari in the wet, noting that ever since he joined the Italian manufacturer, he has faced same problems in rainy conditions. No matter what he has tried, it hasn’t worked out. He reckons it needs to be corrected for 2026 certainly.
They can play around with the set-up, but it has to be corrected fundamentally. “Unfortunately, since I’m in Ferrari we are struggling massively in the wet, we don’t quite find the solution,” said Leclerc to media. “It’s not a fault that we are not trying because we’ve been trying like crazy, but it just doesn’t work.
“It’s very, very frustrating, because it’s been probably my biggest strength in the junior categories coming up, and we are just struggling like crazy whenever it’s wet. The tyres don’t switch on, and we just have very, very poor grip. It’s clear that we’ve got to do steps forward in those conditions. It’s extremely difficult to drive for us.
“On my side, I can only say that it’s unbelievably difficult to drive. I know exactly what I need to go faster, however it’s very difficult to achieve that. Well, yeah, that’s [2026] what we need to look at, because I feel like with the previous generations of cars, it was very, very similar. So, yeah, we’ve just been struggling and being poor on the wet since I joined the team.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be confident to say that because it’s been too many years that we’ve been struggling. And sometimes we kind of find away, but then we prove, we are proved wrong very quickly after that. So I think, the best way is, next wet sessions, we’ll just get out on track and try many different things in order to try and find our way in those conditions because at the moment, we are really struggling,” summed up Leclerc.
But team boss Vasseur didn’t think it to be a major problem citing the last race in Las Vegas when it rained. For 2026, the Frenchman is confident it won’t be a problem since it will be a brand new car and nothing will be carried over from 2025. He reckoned that media mis-constructed Leclerc’s statements, when notified that the Monegasque highlighted about the fundamental issue.
“I won’t give you details, but it was not always true,” said Vasseur to media. “It’s more a matter of grip. If you have a look back in Las Vegas, the first part of the FP3 with the Wet [tyre] we were P1 with Lewis. It’s not that the car is not fitting with the Wet tyre or the Intermediate tyre, it’s that on some conditions of grip we are struggling more. I’m not sure that Charles said something like this.
“You have to read again the note, but I’m sure that he didn’t say that you will have a correlation between 2026 and 2025. We won’t carry over a single part of the car in 2026, and it will be a completely different project for everybody. But it’s true that we are not at the level that we would like [in the wet], but we always want to do more,” summed up Vasseur.
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