Leclerc positively surprised by Ferrari’s pace at the Hungaroring

Having finished in fourth place in Mogyoród, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has revealed that his car’s performance exceeded his expectations at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Ferrari has had a difficult spell in recent weeks. The Maranello-headquartered outfit introduced a new upgrade package at Barcelona which caused severe bouncing in high-speed corners.

The Scuderia has arrived with slight modifications to the floor of the SF-24 to cure the issue, and the car looked more planted at the Hungaroring than at prvious rounds. Although it still seems to be a step away from McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, the team thinks that it can build on the current configuration of the SF-24 for the remainder of the season.

Sunday’s Hungarian Grand saw Charles Leclerc display an impressive start, improving from sixth to fifth. The remainder of the race saw Monegasque battling with Lewis Hamilton for P4, and the Ferrari man later closed in on the Hamilton – Verstappen fight thanks to a good tyre offset. In the end, he was set to settle for fifth until Verstappen’s late off, which earned him one extra place.

“We turned it around today. We had a solid race, with the right tyre management and a good pace. A P4 is not the result we want of course and we know that we have lots of work ahead, however, we were in better form than expected.

“It’s difficult to overtake on this track and we had to manage overheating, being just behind Lewis (Hamilton) on the last stint, which was tricky.

“We took all our opportunities today and it’s good to bring home these points for the team,” noted the Monegasque

His team-mate Carlos Sainz had a lonely race until the very end of the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Spaniard got overtaken by Lewis Hamilton, Leclerc and Fernando Alonso at the start of the race. Although he was able to retake his place from Alonso on Lap 3, he slightly lost the connection to the group ahead of him by that point.

Thereafter, he was slightly off the pace of the cars in front of him, and Ferrari put him on an offset strategy. This later bor fruit, and Sainz could display an impressive late-race pace, but he finished down in P6.

“A tough race for me. The start was not good and here in Hungary it’s quite crucial. That compromised the first two stints, having to overtake cars to get to P6, and from there onwards it was quite a solitary race.

“The last stint I could push a bit more after extending with the Hard tyre but overall, as we saw yesterday, we were lacking pace compared to the cars at the front this weekend.

“Belgium is a completely different track and we have to think what approach we want to take there with the car to try to finish the first half of the season with a good team result,” concluded the two-time F1 race winner.