Ferrari, Charles Leclerc declare Montreal weekend already closed on Saturday
Already on Saturday, Charles Leclerc already gives his weekend in Montreal as over. With almost exactly one day to go before the traffic lights of the Canadian Grand Prix, Ferrari’s Monegasque extinguishes all hopes of doing well in the race at the circuit dedicated to the memory of Gilles Villeneuve. The reason for this is, of course, the eighth place he suffered in qualifying. But it is also to be found in the very deep problems he encountered in getting the most out of his Ferrari on the track.
“This weekend was really horrible,” Leclerc admitted to ‘Sky Sport,’ using the past and not the present, by the way. Yesterday we had some problems in braking, which we have since solved. However, in Q1 we couldn’t do what I needed to do, and we didn’t bring the tire up to temperature. Even in Q3 I couldn’t find the ideal window for the tires. The lap was acceptable, but it only brought me eighth place. And it is clear that eighth on a Ferrari is not enough. Hopefully tomorrow we can lift the weekend a bit.”
The starting grid mercilessly tells the story of the distance between Ferrari and the top cars. Ahead of Leclerc are the two Mercedes of George Russell – pole position with 1:12.578 – and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, Lewis Hamilton in the twin Ferrari and even Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar in the two Red Bulls. A situation that reflects the structural difficulties of the SF-26, already photographed by team principal Frederic Vasseur after the Australian Grand Prix, when he had quantified the gap from the top in “about half a second.”
The Canadian weekend had already offered little encouraging signs for the Cavallino from the first sessions. In Saturday’s Sprint Race, Leclerc had finished fifth, preceded by Russell, Norris, Antonelli and Piastri, while teammate Hamilton had finished sixth after contact with the “Wall of Champions” in the final laps. It was a result that confirms how Ferrari struggles to settle into the fight for the positions that count, finding itself in a sort of limbo between the two Mercedes and McLarens on one side and the rest of the pack on the other.
The difficulties in Montreal are not an isolated case this season. Already in Miami, Leclerc had experienced a bitter weekend: after fighting for the podium with Piastri, a mistake in the finale sent him into a tailspin, slipping from third to sixth. “It was an almost perfect start to the season, this mistake I cannot afford,” the Monegasque had declared at the end of that race, where Antonelli had triumphed once again. In the overall standings, Leclerc sits third at 41 points behind leader Mercedes, a distance that already makes the title chase complicated.
On the technical front, Ferrari is banking on ADUO – the regulatory mechanism that grants additional development opportunities to the least competitive teams on the power unit front – to gradually close the gap from Mercedes. Vasseur has repeatedly pointed to this tool as the key instrument for the revival of the SF-26, but the timeframe is not short: the regulations only allow a move in this direction after the sixth Grand Prix of the season, which coincides with the Monaco race on June 7. On Sunday night, at the circuit named after Gilles Villeneuve, Leclerc and Hamilton will nevertheless try to take advantage of every opportunity to climb back up, aware that the margin for maneuver is narrow but that in Canada, with its violent braking and its walls always lurking, unpredictability is always just around the corner.
