Charles Leclerc explains shock British Grand Prix exit as Haas upstage Ferrari

Charles Leclerc said the team were “paying the price” for experimenting with setup changes but hoped it would have longer term benefits.

The Ferrari man exited qualifying at Silverstone in Q2 and even his team-mate Carlos Sainz was only able to qualify seventh for Sunday’s race – behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas. As to why he struggled, Leclerc suggested it was one step back in the hope of making two steps forward.

Charles Leclerc explains Silverstone qualifying struggles

Ferrari have been on a downward turn since Leclerc’s win in Monaco and after not finishing on the podium since then, it looks unlikely Leclerc will break that streak this weekend.

As for Leclerc, he suggested he had been “struggling a lot” and said they were “paying a little bit the price today” due to their setup choices.

“We are just struggling a lot at the moment,” he told media including PlanetF1.com. “I felt like yesterday, we learned a good amount for the team by splitting the cars, that comes also with the fact that you are not really optimising your weekend and focusing on performance only.

“Obviously today we lost Q3 by a 10th and it was the first time I was driving with this configuration on the dry after FP3 in the wet.

“So all in all, we are struggling to optimise the weekend but I think that it will help us long term, what we’ve done yesterday, however, I feel like we’re paying a little bit the price today.”

As for why the team have lost performance since Monaco, Leclerc said that they have had to take steps back to compensate bouncing in the car.

“I won’t go too much into detail but for sure we’ve lost some performance since Monaco, as a matter of fact, and we are looking into it,” he said. “That’s also why we are doing all these tests.

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“We came to the conclusion that it was the right choice to come back for this weekend mostly because of bouncing and we’ll take the right decision for the future very soon.

“What we’ve done yesterday was very helpful to help us take the right decision going forward in a similar position to this.

“Mercedes is in front, McLaren is in front, Red Bull is in front and we are the ones that have been struggling since a few races, too many races.

“We need to bounce back and try and find the balance and just the performance that is in the car that we don’t quite find.

“The rain hopefully or anything can help us. The worst thing would be a normal race with the same strategy for everybody.”

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