Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc claimed an issue with his front right brake during the season-opening 2024 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix was “impossible to manage”.
Leclerc held second position in the first laps but was overhauled by Mercedes’ George Russell and then later his team-mate Carlos Sainz on two separate occasions.
Although the Monegasque driver would get back ahead of Russell to finish fourth on the road, he languished 14s behind Sainz once the chequered flag dropped.
Leclerc was spotted in the opening stages struggling to slow down into the downhill left-hander at Turn 10 and suspects second was possible with functional brakes.
“It was impossible in the first 15 laps, the issue was getting a lot worse every lap, so I was basing my braking for [Turn] 9/10 with the previous lap, which felt too late all the time, but the issue was getting a lot worse, so every time I would brake three metres earlier but still lock up,” he explained.
“Then Lap 15 or 20 the issue stabilised, the team told me on the radio it was more than 100 degree split from front right to front left which is huge, so at that moment I understood the best I can do was to bring the car home.”
“And honestly all in all considering that the issue didn’t get any better throughout the whole race, we started to be more consistent when the issue didn’t worsen every lap – which was helping me to be more consistent.
“Considering everything, to finish fourth is a really good effort but I’m obviously very disappointed with the result, honestly think second place would have been very possible today.”
Pressed on whether he had an idea of why the problem occurred, Leclerc answered: “No.”
Leclerc believes that his misfiring brake would have made overtaking Russell tough without the Mercedes driver opening the door when he ran wide off the track at Turn 10.
“I think it would have been very difficult for me to overtake George even though I was faster if he hadn’t done that mistake, because he was quite good in the last corner so I had to go from very far, but with the brakes it was very difficult for me to take that risk, so could have been very difficult if he hadn’t made that mistake,” he said.
Ferrari has committed to a complete revamp with its SF-24 car with the aim of ensuring that its drivers can maintain a competitive pace across the duration of a race stint.
Leclerc is convinced that the Italian marque’s status as the clear second-quickest team in Bahrain proved that it has got on top of its tyre degradation woes from last term.
“Today I don’t think there’s anything to take out of my race,” he reflected.
“I’m quite surprised when I was hearing the pace at the end of the race because we were doing relatively good lap times with a car that was feeling completely out of place because I had to change completely the brake balance, the engine braking, to counter the front right brake that wasn’t working properly.
“So all in all the pace was better than what I expected with an issue like this; however to know exactly the real pace is difficult.”
Despite Sainz finishing within five seconds of Sergio Perez’s Red Bull, Max Verstappen romped clear to lead every lap en route to amassing a winning margin of 22s.
Asked whether Red Bull is as far ahead as he had predicted, Leclerc admits he was confident that he was well-placed to put pressure on Verstappen until his issue.
“Again it’s difficult,” he said. “I was quite optimistic for the race this morning, I thought my car was better placed for the race pace but we couldn’t confirm that today.
“Also we have to wait until Jeddah to see whether the gap between Max and ourselves is the same or bigger than what we expected.”
He added: “I’m sure it’s different, that is on my side, again it wasn’t a small issue and it really felt really bad so I had to change a lot the way I was driving, had to sacrifice a lot the braking points, so all in all I think there was quite a bit of performance in it, but how much is difficult to say.”
