Charles Leclerc pinpoints Ferrari anomaly after ‘disappointing’ Hungarian GP

Charles Leclerc was left disappointed with his Ferrari’s performance at the Hungarian Grand Prix, as the correlation between expectation and results failed to align.

Leclerc started on the front row after a strong performance across the weekend. However, as the lights went out, he slipped back through the order, leaving him fifth on the first lap.

He made his way up to fourth when his teammate Lewis Hamilton received a five-second penalty. However, the Monegasque still told the media the weekend was ‘disappointing’.

“It’s a disappointing weekend, and I think the thing that is standing out for me after the last three races is that out of the last three races, there were two races where we were expecting to struggle and we finished first and second,” he said.

“In the race where we expected to do well, we finished fourth and fifth.”

Issues in consistency

Inconsistency has been a consistent issue for the team where the data and expectation haven’t matched up to the on-track performance. The discrepancies got so bad that Hamilton stopped using the simulator to test race setups, after he found they didn’t match the car.

Leclerc reiterated this point “So there’s clearly a tendency, and it’s not that one car is doing well because it’s doing exceptionally well in the car,” he continued.

“I mean, both cars seem to have that tendency of being good in the weekend where we expected to struggle and struggling in the weekend where we thought we would be good.

“So this has to be understood. I mean, it’s also true that with a good start today, things could have looked very differently because on a track like this, there’s not much overtaking.”

With a track like Hungary, overtaking is incredibly difficult with the narrow track and winding corners that are often likened to Monaco.

With this in mind, Leclerc urged that the poor start cost him a lot, with it so hard to overtake, having a good start was vital to the race.

“The start again, we paid the price a lot today with the start.” He told the media, “However, we weren’t particularly stellar at any point of the race. I mean, the first stint on Hard was not bad.

“The last stint on Soft was pretty good. But then there were too many ups and downs. And I think that’s really where we need to work: try and find that consistency with this car.

“Because it’s just been very, very tricky on some stints for Lewis and some other stints with me. And it’s just a little bit strange how uncorrelated everything is.”

Since his victory in Silverstone and Hamilton’s victory in Barcelona, both drivers have had the pace to fight for the win and yet victory has just slipped away from the prancing horses. Leclerc will be looking to correlate the expectations with results in Zandvoort in September.

READ MORE: Lewis Hamilton questions Ferrari strategy after ‘downhill’ F1 Hungary performance