25/05/2025 13:15
Charles Leclerc has revealed his befuddlement at Ferrari's Monaco
Grand Prix pace despite his pre-event worries. Coming into the
weekend, Leclerc felt Ferrari was not in contention for victory
owing to weaknesses in the low-speed corners of the SF-25 package.
However, he topped all three practice sessions, Q1 and then claimed
provisional pole until he was pipped by 0.109s by Lando Norris to P
on the grid. Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was fourth on the grid on
the road, having been close to Leclerc throughout the weekend, but
starts seventh following a penalty for impeding Max Verstappen.
However, Leclerc revealed he simply did not have any answers behind
Ferrari's shock performance, although he did offer a potential
explanation when questioned. "No, I am not satisfied because you
forget very quickly the expectations you have going into a weekend
when the free practices are going so well," Leclerc told media,
including RacingNews365. "I think we were wrong with the
expectations that we had, but at the end of the day, it was a lot
more positive than what we initially thought. "We still need to
understand why, to be completely honest, for me, it is an unknown.
"I don't know why we are so fast in the slow speed. The only
explanation I can find for now is that on a track like this, where
there's only low speed, basically no high-speed corners, in most of
the tracks, we had to take compromises in order not to lose too
much in high-speed corners. "We don't have to set up the car in a
way where we compromise anything here because we just focus on the
low speed. "When we are on these kinds of tracks, it seems that
there's some performance in the low speed from the car, but we are
a little bit stuck at the moment on other tracks, so I don't think
we can apply it to any other tracks other than Monaco,
unfortunately."
