A downcast Charles Leclerc painted a bleak picture for Ferrari after a tough sprint qualifying session at the United States Grand Prix, where he could only manage 10th on the grid—over a second behind polesitter Max Verstappen. Leclerc’s day got off to a tough start due to missing part of practice with a gearbox issue, but even after repairs, he struggled for pace in the SF-25.
Leclerc explained, “Everywhere. Honestly, my lap was clean in SQ3. I don’t regret much what I’ve done in my lap. Maybe a little bit more mileage [in practice] on the medium, you can fine tune the car a little bit better. There might be one-tenth in that, a tenth-and-a-half, I don’t know, but it’s not enough. We are so far behind now.”
His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, wasn’t faring much better, ending up eighth and nearly nine-tenths down on Verstappen’s time, with both drivers easily outpaced by Stake’s Nico Hulkenberg. Hulkenberg’s performance—almost five-tenths quicker than both Ferrari works drivers—highlighted just how much Ferrari struggled compared to even their customer teams.
Leclerc doesn’t expect a sudden turnaround for the Scuderia over the rest of the Grand Prix weekend: “I’ll be very surprised if we find something that will make us such a jump. But I hope I’m wrong. But unfortunately for now, it just seems like it’s the potential of our car… It was a very poor day.”
The Monaco driver acknowledged the surprise strength of not just the usual frontrunners, but also Hulkenberg and other unexpected teams, admitting Ferrari needs to understand if rivals have discovered something they have missed.
