The Ferrari is too slow let’s do what we do

Charles Leclerc has insisted that Ferrari is maximizing the rhythm of his formula 1 2025 car, which makes it even more frustrating when his best in the classification of the Miami Grand Prix only left him eighth on the grill.

Leclerc, who lost Saturday’s Sprint race after crashing into the wall on his grill in the rain, and his teammate Lewis Hamilton suffered with the performance in a dry classification session for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Leclerc could only be eighth, at 0.550s from the Max Verstappen pole and behind the two Williams, while Hamilton was eliminated by little in Q2 and will be 12th.

The most worrying aspect for Leclerc is that he really felt that his final classification effort was quite good, which shows that Ferrari lacks gross performance to compete with McLaren, Red Bull or Mercedes.

“It’s frustrating,” he admitted. “To be honest, even more frustrating that this weekend I felt that we are maximizing the potential of the car. It’s just that the potential of the car is not there. Today in the classification I felt very satisfied with my return, but it is only bringing us anything, p8 or something like that.”

“We are not fast. Let’s do what we do with the car – we can run in different ways, but we simply do not have the aerodynamic load that others have at this time.”

Miami shows Ferrari’s weakness at low speed

While Leclerc was able to drive to the podium on the High Speed ​​Urban Circuit of Yeda two weeks ago, he says that Ferrari is further exposed in the 5.41 km Miami International Autodrome, dominated by slower curves.

“I think a track like this also highlights our weak points,” he said. “There are many low speed curves, and the two (cars) Williams are in front of us – and I consider that my return was good. So I think it is quite easy to understand where we are missing.”

When asked about his accident before the start of the Sprint race on wet, Leclerc said it was a mistake to complete the grid with intermediates while there was a lot of stagnant water on the track.

“first of all, the error was to go out with intermediate tires with these track conditions,” he said. “We have to understand what we have done wrong as a team, but obviously I think this was the main error that cost us a lot.”

“Obviously, that made all day much more difficult for mechanics and for me too, not to give as many laps as others, but I don’t feel that today I have paid the price of it. We simply did not be fast enough.”

Miami GP photos – Classification