Charles Leclerc finished third in Imola, the first podium for a Ferrari driver on this circuit since Michael Schumacher’s 2006 victory. However, he was unable to keep up with Lando Norris at the end of the race when the Briton increased the pace and came right into Max Verstappen’s exhaust.
THE STRATEGIC CHALLENGE WITH MCLAREN: “WE NEED TO TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT, I HAVE NO REGRETS”
Today’s race proved to be as close as expected, and strategy played an important role. Compared to McLaren, Ferrari came into the pits slightly later. Whilst this gave them fresher tyres, it also gave Norris more of a buffer when he came into the pits. Leclerc spent the end of his race looking in his mirrors. Oscar Piastri was on the charge in the second stint, having passed Carlos Sainz.
Leclerc explained how this influenced the second part of the Emilia Romagna GP:
“My pace was the most constant of all. I was in the low 1:20s throughout the race. It’s the others who raced a little more strange.
“Perhaps at the start of the last stint, McLaren saved the tyre a little more with Lando while Oscar pushed, and therefore, I had to push with the Hard tyres.
“In the end, what I took at the beginning of the tyre I couldn’t use at the end. But we had to try something. I have no regrets because we did everything we could. We needed to do something a little different.
“We pushed in the first part of the race, then we missed the pace of McLaren who was very strong at the end .”
FERRARI SF-24: CORNERS OK, STRAIGHT-LINE SPEED TO BE FIXED
The key factor in Ferrari’s weekend at Imola was its performance in the first sector. The SF-24 suffered yesterday in qualifying, and a gap of 3-4 tenths emerged in the race, which was also confirmed in the race. Leclerc also underlined this:
“I’m a little more confident than yesterday, but not happy with today’s result. Yesterday, I didn’t know where the time came from in Sector 1.
“Looking at the data, there is something that Red Bull and McLaren do strange with the engine strategy, only in the starting straight we lose everything there.
“Then in the corners, we are a little faster or the same, so there’s that to look at.
“Yesterday, Max also had the slipstream in qualifying. Once we’ve sorted this out, we’re done in the race.”
When there were around 15 laps to go, Leclerc had also managed to enter the DRS zone with Norris before a small mistake made when cutting the Variante Alta made him definitively lose contact with the Briton:
“On a track like this, every time you approach under the second, I was a few laps behind Lando. It’s not enough to overtake.
“At that point, I was perhaps 1-2 tenths faster than him. Then in the end, he was much faster than Max – but once he got behind, I couldn’t have gotten closer .”
UPDATE PACKAGE: LECLERC ASKS TO WAIT BEFORE JUDGING
Ferrari’s long-awaited upgrade package made its debut at Imola. There were improvements, even if hidden by a final result similar to that of the previous weekends.
The fans could be disappointed, even if the team had expressed caution, and on the eve, even on our pages, we had warned to maintain expectations that were not exaggerated, but Leclerc invites us to be patient and wait for other tracks before passing judgements:
“We expected a race like that. We need to sort out qualifying. What happened yesterday is quite clear and perhaps Imola is not the optimal track to judge updates like the ones we brought. Monaco won’t be either, then in Canada we hope we’ll see it.”
However, Red Bull and McLaren are close, and next weekend, there will be a special race like the Monaco GP:
“We go to Monaco to win. I was close here, too. We must have the mentality that every time we enter a weekend, victory is possible.
“In Monaco, everything is possible. It is a particular track where the driver can make the difference, even the setup. We’re starting from scratch a bit, and we’ll go there with victory in mind.”
