Leclerc dumbfounded as title fight slips away: 'We are doing something wrong'

15:13, 28 Apr

byNorberto Mujica

For Ferrari it has been an underwhelming start to their 2025 F1 season, when compared to the title-winning premise ahead of the campaign. Now Charles Leclerc's words, offer some hope for Ferrari's F1 title bid, but it is evident said hope is still somewhat distant nonetheless.

For Leclerc, the F1 dynamics this year are similar to that of recent years, albeit a bit amplified. “I think we are close on the race pace. I think free air dictates a little bit who is going to win the race,” he said during the FIA Post Race press conference in Saudi Arabia.

“That’s always been the case. Maybe this year a little bit more than other years."

Leclerc nor Ferrari understand their qualifying woes

However, Ferrari seem unable to resolve a changing qualifying issue that is preventing them from extracting the most out of their Saturdays.

“But unfortunately, for two years, we are just struggling in qualifying to put everything together. This weekend the problem is it’s not always the same issue."

“This time it was four-tenths in the first three corners. For the rest of the lap, we were fast."

“And now today in the race, actually, the first sector was probably the best sector we had. So we’ve got to look at that.

Charles Leclerc fighting for position at the start of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix with George Russell

Leclerc feels F1 title fight slipping away from him

After five rounds the Monegasque is now 52 points behind championship leader, Oscar Piastri. For now Leclerc wants to keep the losses contained

“Obviously, there are answers in what we are doing, and we are doing something wrong, clearly. We’ve got to find it.

“We cannot lose too many races before finding it because we’re already 50 points down in the Drivers’ Championship. We’re not looking at it too much, but 50 points is a big number. I don’t want to be losing more points than that in the next few races.”