Charles Leclerc described the Canadian GP as the toughest weekend of his F1 career. Despite a fourth place in the race, the Ferrari driver could never really connect with the absolute top, while he struggled with confidence and balance in the SF-26 throughout the weekend. Whereas teammate Lewis Hamilton experienced one of his strongest weekends in Ferrari service, Leclerc was left in uncertainty.
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The problems started already on Friday, when Leclerc indicated that brake issues significantly affected his feeling in the heavy braking zones of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Although a fifth place in the sprint race still offered some hope for recovery, he dropped back to eighth place in qualifying, four tenths behind polesitter George Russell. In the main race, it was a matter of survival, with Leclerc mainly benefiting from incidents ahead of him to eventually finish fourth.
‘Terrible weekend’
“It was a terrible, terrible weekend,” Leclerc summed up the Canadian round afterwards. “I had already said that this was probably the hardest weekend in my F1 career. I have now raced and I can say with certainty that it is the hardest weekend in my F1 career,” he said with a painful laugh. “I never got the tires set up properly, but of course that has nothing to do with the car. Lewis (Hamilton, ed.) did a fantastic job – I want to congratulate him for that. I just had a hard time, I had zero feeling in the car.”
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“The only positive about such a weekend is that I have the same car as Lewis,” he added. “Looking at what he did differently this weekend might possibly explain why I had such a hard time. In the first half of the race, I was just too slow.” Hamilton, on the other hand, drove a strong weekend and took second place, his best result ever in Ferrari colors. “I think he performed exceptionally well,” Leclerc responded when asked. “On my side, there is still much more to improve, at least to reach Lewis’s level on a day like this. I will analyze the data, as I have often done after a challenging race.”
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