Charles Leclerc admitted that Ferrari is still struggling with tire warm-up, especially compared to Red Bull, something which makes their races more difficult.
In 2023, the Scuderia had elevated tire wear during the races, thus making it difficult for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to be competitive on Sunday. This year, Ferrari managed to solve that issue, but the Monégasque highlighted another problem that the team needs to focus on: tire warm-up.
“I don’t think tire degradation was a thing. It was more about tire warm-up, and we struggled a bit more to bring them to the right temperature in order to push.
“This made it also a bit more difficult because I had to overtake cars during my warm-up, and that was a bit trickier for us than for them.
“That’s where they [Red Bull] pulled the gap, which then stayed more or less stable towards the end, but that was too late for us to put them under any pressure.”
Leclerc then added that, compared to the last season, the Milton Keynes-based team doesn’t have a huge advantage with the DRS, a factor that made Red Bull incredibly strong in 2023.
“The DRS, I don’t think that’s where we are lacking at the moment. But of course we’ll have a further analysis after this weekend to understand exactly what are still our weaknesses and try to update them since the last race.”