The training day in Silverstone already showed signs of what would prove true for Scuderia Ferrari in qualifying on Saturday: Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz are far behind their direct competitors Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull, who are in a completely different league. Leclerc was eliminated in the second qualifying session with a time of 1:27:097 and will start the British Grand Prix from eleventh position. Sainz continued to fight his way through, but even his best time of 1:26:509 was only enough for seventh place.
In Q1, things looked even more promising for both of them: the Monegasque reached P3 and the Spaniard P4. Only the two Mercedes were ahead of them. After that, however, the conditions changed, which became a problem for the Ferrari drivers, as Sainz explains: “I thought we were on the way to a good result. But when the track dried out, we lost our competitiveness.”
Ferrari in the update trap?
But Leclerc’s early exit cannot be attributed solely to the changing weather and track conditions. On Thursday, the Monegasque Formula 1 driver insisted that the updates had not failed, but that they simply had to get them into the right working window. Nevertheless, the Italian racing team decided on Saturday to go back to the old Ferrari specification that they had used before the extensive Barcelona Update to go back.
In the training sessions on Friday, Sainz and Leclerc were still driving with different specifications: Leclerc with the latest and Sainz with the previous Ferrari. “Yesterday, we learned a lot for the future through the different configuration of the cars. Although that means that we may not optimize the whole weekend, as we are focused on learning something about performance. I think that what we did yesterday will help us in the long term,” said Leclerc after qualifying, defending Ferrari’s splitting strategy on the training day.
For the Monaco winner, however, fitting the old specification on Saturday meant that he drove the old configuration in the dry for the first time in qualifying because it rained in the third free practice session in the morning. He therefore feels that he paid the price for this team decision today. Nevertheless, he is looking ahead: “When we talk about a tenth of a second that was missing for Q3, it’s about the small details. At the moment we are simply struggling with the situation we are in and we hope to come back as soon as possible.”
The reason why Ferrari decided to rebuild both cars to the Imola specification on Saturday is obvious: The major update package for Barcelona brought the bouncing back to the SF-24. “We decided to switch to the old specification for today because there was more bouncing with the new one. With the high-speed corners that we have in Silverstone, the advantage of installing the new parts was not positive enough,” explains Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur.
Leclerc explains qualifying debacle: Battle with grip and balance
Nonetheless, Leclerc faced some challenges in Q2: “The left front tyre was not in the window. I just had very little grip and struggled a lot with the balance in the high-speed area and couldn’t get the car around the corners. That’s where the lap time was lost,” he complained.
After his first Q2 run, Leclerc reported to his pit crew that the tires did not feel good and that the front tires in particular lacked grip. The second attempt brought him only a minimal improvement – not good enough to qualify further up the field.
A closer look at Sainz and Leclerc’s Q2 times reveals that the area between turns 10-14, the Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel combination at the end of the second sector, is Leclerc’s problem area. This is where he loses the most time to his teammate on both his first and second timed laps. As a result, he also gets a bad exit from the S-curves and from there his pace on the Hangar Straight is also compromised.
High-speed challenge: Silverstone reveals Ferrari weaknesses
“We are just really slow at the moment and we have a lot of inconsistency in the car,” Leclerc sums up the Scuderia’s problem. Sainz, on the other hand, seems to feel a little more comfortable in the nervous Ferrari, although the Spaniard admits: “I am proud and happy with Q1 and Q2. But Q3 showed that we are still missing something.” The Silverstone Circuit in particular – the king of high speed – reveals the biggest shortcoming of the SF-24, which was already apparent in Spielberg and Barcelona, says Sainz.
However, they did not maximize the result in Q3, said Sainz. Especially in light of the warm-up lap for his final run, where he fought with Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri to cross the line in time before the chequered flag and therefore did not prepare the tires properly. As a result, the Spaniard set his best time on his first attempt and was unable to improve on his second attempt.
Leclerc and Sainz both admit that the Silverstone weekend is an indication of the work that Ferrari has to do for the next races. “Mercedes is ahead, McLaren is ahead, Red Bull is ahead and we are the ones struggling. For too many races we have had to pull ourselves together and try to find the balance and performance of the car that we don’t have at the moment,” said Leclerc. He demands: “We shouldn’t panic too much. But this difficult time is lasting longer now than last year. We really have to react now.”
For the Formula 1 race, the Monegasque is putting his hopes in the British weather gods: “The worst thing would be a normal race in which everyone drives on the same strategy. I’ll be happy if it rains.”