Charles Leclerc after the Spielberg opener: Bleak outlook for the Austrian Grand Prix

After Lewis Hamilton celebrated his first Grand Prix victory in red at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, there were high hopes that Ferrari would also put in a strong performance at Spielberg. However, the start to the eighth race weekend proved to be a relatively subdued affair for the Scuderia from Maranello.

In the first free practice session, the red Grand Prix cars finished in 5th and 9th places, with Hamilton the faster of the two, whilst the second car was driven by Dino Beganovic, the promising young Swedish-Bosnian driver. It was not until the second practice session that Charles Leclerc took the wheel and, after 35 laps, was the eighth-fastest. Hamilton once again finished in fifth place.

A big step forward is needed

After the session, Leclerc emphasised that his late start was not the reason for his modest performance: “It wasn’t an easy Friday, and that applies to me in particular. Of course, I missed the first practice session, which is never ideal, but you can actually make up for the time lost quite easily.”

Rather, the speed needed to keep up with the frontrunners was lacking: “As a team, we’re not very competitive at the moment, so we’ve still got a lot of work to do to get back to a more reasonable pace,” sighed the Monegasque driver, adding hopefully: “But we’ll now analyse all the data and work hard to hopefully take a big step forward.”

Gloomy outlook for the Austrian Grand Prix

Leclerc explained that they particularly need to find more speed on the straights: “There are quite a lot of straights here and we’re losing so much time on those sections of the track.” But he also admitted they needed to improve their cornering speed: “I think we’ve been in for a nasty surprise in that regard, because normally we’re competitive in the corners. But that’s not the case here, so we need to step it up.”

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Leclerc then tempered expectations, noting that the problem with pace on the straights is unlikely to be resolved in the short term. “That’s why I think we’ll struggle this weekend. Neither Lewis nor I are really happy with the car at the moment, but we won’t give up and I hope we’ll have a better day on Saturday.”