Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is surprised at the lack of racing speed on the hard tyre he faced during the Chinese GP. Leclerc ultimately had to settle for fourth place while he had expected to fight for the podium.
“I think as a team we didn’t find the speed, especially on the hard tyres, which is a bit strange because the strong point of this car is that it delivers solid performance in all conditions and on all tyre compounds,” said a surprised Charles Leclerc after the Chinese GP.
“This race was a bit of an outlier because as soon as we put the hard tyre compound on the car we were half a second too slow. That’s very strange. We will look at that and try to understand what went wrong with that stint.”
According to Leclerc, the intention was to compete with Lando Norris and McLaren after the two safety car periods on the hard tyre compound. After all, Leclerc wanted to finish on the podium, but he and Ferrari were unable to compete.
“It’s very strange, especially compared to McLaren. I really thought we would be competing with Lando Norris,” said Leclerc. “I had good tyre management until the safety car which did a kind of reset, with all the strategies, which is a bit of a shame because I think we were doing well until then. We were just too slow on the hard tyre.”
“We expected this weekend to be in line with what we have shown so far this season but here we struggled a bit more.”