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Charles Leclerc has pinpointed Ferrari's inability to light up the tyres soon enough as an area where it struggled as compared to Red Bull. The team scored its second podium of the season, with Leclerc finishing third after Carlos Sainz did the same in Bahrain.
Charles Leclerc qualified on the front row for Jeddah, just like he did in Bahrain. However, as the race progressed, it became clearer that the Ferrari driver could not keep up with the Red Bull. After fending off Sergio Perez at the start of the race, the Mexican was able to make his way through and overtake Leclerc a few laps later.
After the safety car intervention, it took Charles Leclerc a few laps to get his tyres up to temperature, and by the time he was able to overtake Lewis Hamilton, Perez and Verstappen were long gone.
When questioned during the post-race press conference about what areas he felt Ferrari struggled as compared to Red Bull, Leclerc pointed to the inability to get the tyres up to temperature. He said:
"For 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 last race. However, today I don't think tyre degradation was a thing."
He added:
"It was more about tyre warm-up and we struggled a bit more to bring them to the right temperature in order to push. which 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. And that's where they 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."
Charles Leclerc on how Ferrari struggled at the start of the stints
Charles Leclerc further elaborated on how Ferrari struggled at the start of the stints because of the inability to bring the tyres up to temperature. The driver did struggle to keep up early in a stint, but as the laps piled up, he was in a much better position compared to the Red Bull ahead.
Talking about how his stints evolved, Leclerc said:
"We were struggling all the time at the beginning of the stints, whether it was at the beginning of the Medium or beginning of the Hards, we struggled to switch the tyres on. Then towards the end of the stint we were pretty good. With the Medium, we didn't really see that. With the Hard, we saw that towards the end, but it was too late to actually recover what we had lost at the beginning with the battles we had."
He added:
"All in all, it's been a positive race. I think we are doing small steps in the right direction. If I look back the last six, seven months, we are the team that have improved the most and we are slowly closing the gap. So the gap is still quite big. But if we keep working like that, I'm sure it's a matter of time before we put the Red Bull under a bit more pressure."
Charles Leclerc will be hoping to build on this podium as he tries to bring a level of consistency to his driving.
