(Motorsport-Total.com) – Charles Leclerc has given an unusual insight into his difficult phase at Ferrari. The Monegasque reveals that during his slump in form, he even considered adopting the driving style of his teammate Lewis Hamilton more strongly.
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The decisive factor was the impressive form of the seven-time world champion, who at that time apparently was able to get exactly what Leclerc himself missed out of the Ferrari. Because after Hamilton’s first Ferrari win at the Spanish Grand Prix, Leclerc increasingly came under scrutiny.
While the Briton stood on top of the podium for the Scuderia for the first time in Barcelona, Leclerc struggled with a car in which he did not find the necessary confidence. Especially the races in Montreal and Monaco represented a low point for the Monegasque.
However, the situation has changed significantly since then. With his victory at the British Grand Prix, Leclerc made an impressive comeback. In the Formula 1 podcast F1 Beyond the Grid, the Ferrari driver explains what happened behind the scenes during his difficult phase – and why he even considered orienting himself more towards Hamilton at times.
Leclerc was missing not only the result – but above all the feeling
For Leclerc, a crucial point was that his problems could not be explained solely by the results. Even a disappointing result was not necessarily alarming for him as long as the car felt right. However, this exact feeling was missing for him in Montreal and Monaco.
“When things don’t go well, as was the case in Montreal and Monaco, it’s not just about the results,” explains Leclerc. Barcelona was also different for him despite the disappointment. “Of course, I was disappointed, but the feeling was there.”
The difference is enormous for Leclerc. A driver can live with a poor result if he simultaneously feels he has gotten everything out of the car. If the trust in the vehicle is missing, the situation becomes much more difficult – regardless of where one ends up on the Sunday results list.
“When the feeling is there, you as a driver are much more confident,” says Leclerc. “But in Montreal and Monaco, this feeling really wasn’t there.” In these two races, he therefore largely ignored the result.
“I have to be able to drive the car without thinking too much”
Leclerc describes his personal ideal image of a race weekend very clearly. When he gets into the Ferrari, he wants to be able to rely on his natural instincts instead of constantly having to think about how the car will behave.
“What is important for me: When I get into the car, I get the right feeling and know that I can do my job properly by simply driving naturally and not thinking about things,” says the Monegasque.
It was precisely this naturalness that was lost during his difficult phase. For a driver at Formula 1 level, this can be crucial. If you don’t fully trust the car, you automatically start to question driving maneuvers more and control your own reactions.
Leclerc therefore faced a fundamental decision. “If you have two races in a row where it gets difficult and you don’t have this feeling, you basically have two options,” he explains.
The first option was to adjust the car via the setup so that it better matched his natural driving style again. The second option was much more radical: Leclerc could have tried to adapt his own driving style more strongly to the characteristics of the Ferrari.
Hamilton gave Leclerc an unusual idea
It was exactly at this point that Hamilton came into play. The seven-time world champion had shown impressive form at Ferrari at that time. For Leclerc, it was obviously proven that the car could fundamentally be driven competitively.
“In my case, I have Lewis as a teammate who was in incredible form and still is in incredible form,” says Leclerc. For him, one thought was obvious: If Hamilton is so successful with his natural driving style, it might possibly work to orient oneself more strongly on his approach.
“So I knew that his driving style works,” explains Leclerc. “Of course, it worked. That’s why I still had this option in my head to try it.” However, Leclerc explicitly emphasizes that he did not assume he could simply copy Hamilton’s driving style. That is exactly where the difficulty lies.
Why Leclerc could not simply copy Hamilton
“I emphasize the word try because it is always difficult to reproduce a driving style,” explains the Ferrari driver. The idea of simply imitating a successful teammate sounds logical in theory – but in practice, according to Leclerc, it hardly works.
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“It’s not as simple as: Lewis does this, so I do it the same way,” he says. Because Hamilton’s driving style is the result of a natural adaptation developed over years to different cars and situations.
Leclerc even sees a special strength in his teammate in this. “Lewis is an incredibly talented driver and has a natural driving style that is his own,” explains the Monegasque. Hamilton is “the best in the world” for exactly this way of driving a Formula 1 car.
The problem: What works for Hamilton does not necessarily work for Leclerc. A driver can analyze certain braking phases, turn-in points, or vehicle movements as precisely as he wants – that does not automatically create the same driving style.
“Reproducing it is very difficult,” Leclerc makes clear. Ultimately, he decided against trying to fundamentally align his driving style after the example of his teammate.
Leclerc: Ferrari had to adapt
Instead of adapting his own driving style to the Ferrari, Leclerc wanted to take the opposite path. The car should be tailored more strongly again to his natural preferences. “So I tried to focus more on finding ways to adapt this car a little better to my driving style,” says Leclerc.
In analyzing the data, his team apparently found several points that did not work optimally. “I found a few things in the data that simply didn’t work,” says the Ferrari driver.
However, Leclerc warns against oversimplifying the work of the Formula 1 engineers. The data provides important clues but does not automatically present a clear solution.
“In Formula 1, it is not always black or white,” says Leclerc. It is by no means the case that you simply sit in front of the computer, recognize a certain deviation, and then can predict exactly how much time a change will bring.
“It’s intuition, feeling”: Leclerc explains the search for details
“It’s not that simple. You can’t just sit in front of the computer, look at the data and say: That’s one and a half tenths. Let’s change that, then we’ll gain a tenth.”
Instead, factors that are difficult to express in numbers also play a role for the Ferrari driver. “It’s intuition, it’s feeling, it’s things where you can think: Okay, that makes me a little less comfortable in the car.”
It was exactly at this point that Leclerc started. If the subjective feeling in the car improves, better performance can also result from it. “If I improve this feeling, then the performance will come,” explains the Monegasque.
Leclerc finally found the crucial clues on a Friday evening in Silverstone of all places. Together with his team, he identified two or three points that were relevant to his driving feeling.
Silverstone brought the turnaround
“I saw two or three things on Friday evening in Silverstone and changed them for qualifying on Saturday,” reports Leclerc. The result was immediately noticeable.
“The feeling was much better,” he says. What was even more decisive for Leclerc was that the Ferrari then felt better than at his last really convincing appearance.
“It was even better than in Barcelona,” explains the Monegasque. His win in Silverstone was therefore, from his point of view, not simply the result of a suddenly significantly faster Ferrari. Rather, it marked the provisional climax of a process in which Leclerc regained the feeling for his own driving style and the car.
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