Ferrari "have ideas" on how they could have set up their car better in Qatar, reflects Leclerc
On the back of a disastrous diplay at last weekend's Qatar Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc reckoned that the Scuderia have found out "ideas of what we could have tested" in order to bring the SF-25 in a better working window at the Losai track.
Having struggled for outright pace all through the race weekend in Qatar, Ferrari continued to lack performance during the 57-lap encounter.
Charles Leclerc dropped places off the line, falling behind the Kick Sauber of Nico Hulkenberg. Although he gained places after the clash between Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly, he never really looked able to fight for anything better than an eighth place.
His team-mate Lewis Hamilton elected to start on the softs, which helped him gain off the line. However, when the safety car was deployed, and the majority of the field opted to complete the first of two mandatory pit stops, the Briton lost position as he needed to wait for his team to complete Leclerc’s tyre service.
When Isack Hadjar dropped out late on with a puncture, Hamilton climbed up to 12th, but it was not enough to score any points in the penultimate round of the season.
Ahead of this weekend's season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Leclerc hinted that Ferrari found out through a series of post-race debriefs how it could have ironed out some of their issues in Qatar.
"Well, we have ideas of what we could have tested. Whether these are the solutions is another story. So, we don't have the 100% solution to it, but we've got ideas of what we didn't try during that weekend.
"And, obviously, we're clearly doing something wrong during the weekend, as we weren't strong from FP1 to the race. So yeah, we have ideas. Whether we have the clear solution, I don't think so."
Pushed on to reveal whether he thinks Ferrari's issues from Qatar could recur in Abu Dhabi, Leclerc added:"No. Surely, it's been accentuated by the fact that Qatar was never going to be a track where we would be strong. But we didn’t perform at the level we should be anyway.
"So yeah, we should have done better even though the characteristics of the track were not good for us. But for this weekend, I expect us to be back to where we should be, which is probably third team or something like that," the Monegasque concluded.
