Charles Leclerc was visibly disappointed after qualifying sixth for Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix sprint race, registering his ‘annoyance’ that Ferrari had lacked pace thus far this weekend.
The Monegasque had arrived in Miami with the understanding that he was finding pace in Ferrari’s SF-25 through a series of set-up tweaks that had ensured the car was handling more to his liking.
After finishing second in free practice, albeit helped by some of his fellow front-runners not setting times due to a late-session red flag, Ferrari at least gave the illusion that it was in the mix for a grid slot on the front two rows.
Instead, Leclerc was over three tenths shy of pole, albeit just 0.017s off George Russell’s early SQ3 lap that granted the Mercedes driver fifth on Saturday’s grid.
GPS data showed that, although Ferrari’s through-corner speed was solid, it was struggling to maintain it through the traction zones out of the lower-speed corners – and Leclerc’s comments lent credence to this.
“It’s bad,” Leclerc said of his sprint qualifying session. “The lap was good, but the pace is just not at all there for now, so it’s a bit annoying, but it’s the way it is for now.
“I’ll try my best tomorrow to try and do something special with the start, but to be honest, there’s not much room for improvement today. It was just…that’s the pace of the car.
“It’s every corner, really, so it’s not like we are particularly weak in one type of corner. Yes, the slow speed seems to be a little bit more of our weakness, but it changes from one weekend to the other, so it’s just not great.”
His Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton followed a similar thread in his post-sprint qualifying dissection, once again noting that the car had felt better in the opening practice session.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
The seven-time champion did note that it was a “better” session compared to his recent travails in qualifying, but simply noted that Ferrari was struggling for pace in its first attempt at a competitive qualifying session.
“I thought it was a better session. FP1 was probably a bit better; the car was a bit nicer to drive in P1, but we’re just lacking speed. But I’ll just keep working on from there,” Hamilton said.
“I think all the cars ahead are faster, so I don’t know what else to say. There’s always ideas [of what to improve], whether or not they’re going to be right or not.
“But there’s definitely learnings to take from today, set-up changes we made and how the car behaved, and there’s definitely work to do to pick up speed going into the rest of the weekend.”
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