Charles Leclerc walked away from the Canadian Grand Prix empty-handed as Ferrari suffered a double DNF. Leclerc was unable to mount any sort of recovery after a miserable qualifying.
Ferrari will have to investigate why they were so slow in Montreal when many expected them to have an edge over Red Bull. It was clear from the final practice session onwards that something was wrong.
Sure enough, in qualifying, both Leclerc and Carlos Sainz missed out on the top-10 shoot-out. The team opted to use their new tyres at the start of the session rather than the end, and the gamble backfired as their drivers could only manage 11th and 12th.
Leclerc’s hopes of making progress in the race were thwarted by a power unit issue that was costing him significant time down the straights. With little prospect of finishing the points, they fitted dry tyres on the Monegasque’s car before anybody else.
Leclerc couldn’t find any grip after a premature change, and ultimately Ferrari gave up. They called him into the pits and retired the car before teammate Sainz crashed out.
By winning in Monaco, he’d narrowed Max Verstappen’s lead at the top of the championship to 31 points. But it ballooned to 56 as the Dutchman took victory at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Kees van de Grint criticises Charles Leclerc for slick-tyre pit stop in Canada
Speaking to RacingNews365, former Bridgestone tyre engineer Kees van de Grint questioned why Leclerc had acquiesced to fitting the hard tyres so early. He felt he should have demanded more information from his team first.
In his opinion, this is exactly what future Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton or reigning world champion Verstappen would have done. That, he says, is a marker of their status as ‘leaders’ within the team.
He said: “I certainly expected Leclerc to have at least said: ‘Do you think this is the right choice?’ Or are we doing mediums?
“But he came in like a tame sheep and accepted that. [He’s] always nice, but with Hamilton, for example, you regularly hear: ‘Well, was this a good choice or is it the right one?’ And Max also has something to say. But those are also the leaders.”
What Fred Vasseur has ordered Ferrari staff to do ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix
In addition to losing ground in the drivers’, Ferrari allowed Red Bull to increase their constructors’ lead by 25 too. They failed to take advantage of a miserable race for Sergio Perez, who crashed out just like Sainz.
This has prompted team principal Fred Vasseur to take decisive action. He wants the next set of upgrades on the Ferrari car in time for next weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
It was less than a month ago that the Scuderia introduced their first major developments of 2024 at Imola. They weren’t planning to bolt on the next lot until the British GP at the start of next month.
But Vasseur has sparked ‘very frenetic’ scenes at Maranello by adjusting the timeline. The race in Barcelona is the first leg of a triple-header.
Red Bull director Helmut Marko expects his team to be stronger at a series of ‘classic’ tracks after a run of ‘atypical’ races. Leclerc agrees with that assessment, so a fresh raft of updates could be particularly timely.
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