Charles Leclerc has been left bemused with his “nightmare” recent run as a failed mid-race gamble on Intermediates cost him points in Formula 1’s British Grand Prix.
Leclerc was striving to recover from a shock Q2 exit at Silverstone and his race began well as he made up three places and passed Lance Stroll into Stowe on Lap 13.
However, the Monegasque’s race would unravel when rain arrived and an attempt to anticipate the heavier shower saw him make a premature move to Intermediates.
The track was not damp enough at that point, though, and Leclerc ended up heading a lap down on the race leaders despite their own struggles hunting grip on slicks.
Leclerc’s Intermediates would end up being shredded at the moment the crossover period transpired and the time lost in the earlier laps resigned him to coming 14th.
“[It was] clearly the wrong [strategy]. I’ll look back into it,” Leclerc bemoaned.
“Obviously, with the decision, with the message I got and the information I had in the car, I felt like it was the right one,” Leclerc explained.
“It was raining quite a lot in Turn 15. I was told that in this lap, the rain was going to be very heavy, so I stopped to try and anticipate.
“However, the rain came eight or nine laps later. That was obviously the end of our race from that moment onwards.”
Leclerc has now managed 12 points in the four rounds since he was victorious on home soil in Monaco and he has conceded that the latest setback has taken a toll.
“Very frustrating, another weekend to forget, and it starts to be a lot,” he continued.
“It’s very hard. I don’t really have the words to explain it, but it’s been four races that it’s been worse than a nightmare. I hope we can come back soon.”
Leclerc ran the new-spec package in practice prior to reverting like team-mate Carlos Sainz as Ferrari aims to understand the recurring bouncing issue at high speed.
Having been unable to derive “positives” from his charge during the opening laps, Leclerc is hoping that Ferrari can at least extract something from the data gathered.
“It’s really difficult to look at positives on days like this,” he admitted.
“I want to go back with the team, that we analyse the way we are making those decisions on my side, and why we were on the wrong side today.
“It’s a tricky situation that we’re in at the moment. The upgrades brought us the numbers that we were expecting but also brought us quite a lot of bouncing in the high speed.
“For a track like this we decided that it was probably better having a bit less performance but having more consistency, and I think that was the right choice.
“Going forward, we’ll analyse all the data we had until now with the two packages and try to understand if there’s anything we haven’t understood yet.
“The bouncing was [better], so the consistency was better.”
