Charles Leclerc says he was “happier” with the balance of his Ferrari car during Friday at Monza, but admits he must improve his low-fuel performance before qualifying.
Ferrari’s inconsistent campaign continued last time out at the Dutch Grand Prix, with Leclerc retiring from the race and team-mate Carlos Sainz trailing home a distant fifth.
However, the Italian marque enters its home weekend hopeful of a better showing on the type of low-downforce circuit configuration its SF-23 car has fared well at this year.
Although Leclerc was satisfied with his pace on the longer race runs in practice, the Monegasque driver concedes he was lagging behind on the qualifying simulations.
Having been beaten by his team-mate in FP1, Leclerc ended up five places and 0.3s behind Sainz, who took top spot in the second hour.
Reflecting on his Friday, Leclerc said: “Really good on high fuel, on my side I struggled quite a bit more on high fuel, which I think we know what to do for tomorrow.
“I went a bit in a different direction, so we need to reset a little bit for tomorrow and focus especially on the low fuel runs as we were struggling a bit more with the balance of the car there.”
Before his race was curtailed by significant floor damage caused by a dislodged front wing endplate, Leclerc had crashed out in qualifying to resign him to lining up ninth.
The Ferrari driver attributed his incident on a drying track to encountering a car that was unpredictable in its behaviour at each individual corner of the Zandvoort circuit.
But Leclerc has expressed that he is already “happier” with the balance of his car this weekend, adding that he is not concerned by his struggles on the low fuel runs.
“As I said, especially on the high fuel it was much better, on the low fuel my side not great. But again, I know what to do for tomorrow so I’m not too concerned,” he declared.
The Alternate Tyre Allocation qualifying system will make its second appearance tomorrow, following a mixed review of the trial format in Hungary earlier this year.
Introduced as part of the 2023 regulations in order to reduce the number of tyres used each weekend, the arrangement mandates the use of the Hard tyre in Q1, the Medium tyre in Q2 and the Soft compound in Q3.
With the drivers therefore being provided with fewer tyres to use throughout practice, Leclerc has stressed the importance of Ferrari ensuring it maximises its qualifying performance tomorrow afternoon.
Questioned on how the ATA ruling impacts the teams’ practice programmes, Leclerc explained: “FP1 we basically only put one set which on a normal weekend we normally put two sets of tyres, so a bit less laps, or a bit less representative laps, then FP2 was very similar because we saved one set.
“And tomorrow will be a bit of a different FP3 because we’ll have one set less, so we’ll be using one of the sets of today.
“So yeah, you need to adapt a little bit more, you are obviously running less new tyres so a bit less preparation for qualifying.
“We will also in Q1 running the Hard tyres which we only run once, the Medium that we also only run once, so it’s going to be interesting. We have quite a bit less preparation for qualifying and a bit more preparation for the race, so we need to be on top of our low fuel pace.”
After an encouraging opening day, Leclerc is optimistic that Ferrari can produce a much-needed morale-boosting result on Sunday.
“Looking at today, it looks quite positive for now so I’m hoping for a great result on Sunday,” he noted.
