Final weekend Leclerc took pole for Austin’s United States Grand Prix, however was unable to transform that right into a podium after shedding the lead at first and going the fallacious means on technique.
He ended up dropping again to sixth on the end, however was later disqualified for extreme put on on his flooring plank.
The top outcome masked what has been a stronger spell for Leclerc as each he and team-mate Carlos Sainz have gone via ebbs and flows with how a lot confidence their 2023 automobile offers them.
Ferrari’s season has been suffering from inconsistent automobile behaviour over race stints, which it has gone to nice lengths to handle.
Whereas Ferrari admitted it will want to attend for its 2024 automobile to discover a everlasting resolution, Leclerc feels the ground tweaks the Maranello squad launched in Japan have made a big distinction.
Leclerc is not any fan of understeery set-ups, however that was what was wanted to mitigate the 2023 automobile’s worst behaviour and yield the very best lap instances. The Suzuka updates, nevertheless, have now allowed him to make fewer compromises on how he has to stability the SF23.
“All in all, it is precisely what I have been complaining about because the starting of the season, the place we now have a automobile that may be very inconsistent,” Leclerc stated.
“As soon as we get oversteer, we lose quite a lot of total grip and this improve was precisely for that.
“That helped me acquire a bit extra confidence and to arrange the automobile in a means that I desire, and to have a little bit of a stronger entrance, which usually is one thing that I get pleasure from.
Picture by: Ferrari
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
“I simply really feel extra relaxed with the automobile since then. However there’s nonetheless fairly a couple of races left and there is nonetheless numerous work to do. We have to hold pushing, however we did some steps ahead, for certain.”
The updates have helped Leclerc get on par and even perhaps acquire the higher hand on Sainz, who had been Ferrari’s finest performer within the three races following the summer time break, earlier than the Japan flooring arrived.
However staff boss Fred Vasseur thinks Ferrari’s automobile adjustments will assist each drivers obtain the stability they like moderately than favouring one driver over the opposite as an unintended side-effect.
“We are able to fine-tune, and we are able to discover a compromise and resolution, and stability for either side of the storage,” Vasseur stated.
“We’re talking about hundredths of seconds. Charles was on pole in Spa in entrance of Carlos with the previous package deal and every weekend from Spa we’re talking about hundredths of seconds.
“It isn’t that we’re altering fully the method, generally it is a driver mistake, generally it is set-up errors, however we’re into the combat for one tenth, at the least in qualifying.”
Further reporting by Adam Cooper
