The Canadian Grand Prix couldn’t have gone any worse for Ferrari after their heroics at the previous race in Monaco.
A double DNF for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz was far from ideal after they closed the gap to Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship on the streets of Monte Carlo.
Speaking on the Inside The Piranha Club Podcast, journalist Rebecca Clancy has shared her thoughts on the Italian team’s outing in Montreal.
Team principal Frederic Vasseur has done a brilliant job at Ferrari thus far and turned Ferrari into serious title contenders this year, closing the gap to Red Bull after their magnificent season last year.
He’s constantly trying to improve the team and has the ultimate upgrade arriving in 2025 when Lewis Hamilton joins the team from Mercedes.
Clancy has admitted that there seemed to be a bit of tension between Leclerc and his new race engineer Bryan Bozzi in Canada.
He took over from Xavi Marcos ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix but had a tough job keeping Leclerc calm during a nightmare race for the Monegasque driver.
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Tension sensed between Charles Leclerc and Bryan Bozzi in Canada
Everything that could have gone wrong for Ferrari in Montreal did for both Leclerc and Sainz.
Both drivers were eliminated before the top ten shootout in qualifying and had a job on their hands to drive through the grid in difficult conditions on Sunday.
Leclerc’s progress was immediately hampered by a power unit issue that left him struggling to make any progress through the pack.
Speaking on the radio with Bozzi after being told he was losing half a second per lap because of the issues, Leclerc said: “It feels like way more than half a second?” to which Bozzi replied: “Yes, it’s increased, we’re most close to a second now.”
However, Leclerc spent way too long in the pits when the safety car came out following Logan Sargeant’s crash trying to fix his engine issues and the team put him onto the hard tyres despite the rain increasing.
Leclerc was incensed asking if he should box again, to which Bozzi replied, via F1TV: “It’s only going to last only one, two laps.”
That wasn’t good enough for Leclerc who pointed out he was ‘losing like 10 seconds a lap’ and they eventually changed back onto inters before retiring the car.
It was this tension between Leclerc and his race engineer in Canada that suggested that their relationship still needs some work.
That will come in time, however, it’s far from ideal for Leclerc when he’s currently Max Verstappen’s closest rival in the Drivers’ Championship.
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Charles Leclerc not clicking with his Ferrari race engineer yet
Talking about the Monegasque driver’s race, Clancy said: “I thought one of the interesting things from this weekend and Charles Leclerc in particular was he has a new race engineer, he has for a couple of races now and I feel there’s quite a bit of tension and I don’t know how much trust there seems to be in that relationship.
“I wonder if the decision to go onto the hard tyre while it was still raining and Charles Leclerc said, we have to do something, we have to gamble and there was no real pushback saying, ‘We can see the radar’, we heard them say it was going to last two laps, but it didn’t, it lasted longer.
“Eventually Charles had to come back in for the inters. But that relationship isn’t quite…you listen to how [Lewis] Hamilton and Bono [Peter Bonnington] speak to each other, OK that relationship is now in year nine or 10 or wherever we’re up to.
“But that relationship is so important, it’s so crucial because it’s the only person that the driver gets to talk to within the team and it doesn’t feel like it’s clicking.”
Leclerc and race engineer Bozzi will have another chance to improve their understanding of each other at the Spanish Grand Prix.
It can’t go any worse for Ferrari after a pointless weekend although Red Bull will once again be strong at the Circuit de Catalunya.
If Ferrari are going to make a charge to win the Constructors’ Championship, they need to both be beating Sergio Perez at each race and taking points off Max Verstappen when they can.
That won’t be easy but they have two drivers capable of splitting the Red Bulls at every race this season.
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