Why is Charles Leclerc so much slower than his team-mate Lewis Hamilton?

Lewis Hamilton blew everyone away at Silverstone on Friday: the Briton was the fastest in the first (and only) free practice session. In the Sprint qualifying session, Hamilton’s name topped the timesheets in every single qualifying segment. Consequently, the Briton secured pole position for the Sprint at his favourite circuit, Silverstone.

His team-mate Charles Leclerc was unable to keep up. He will start from fourth on the grid, having been 0.327 seconds slower than Hamilton. In Friday’s midday practice session, he was two places (third) and almost six tenths of a second behind Hamilton.

Hamilton clearly ahead of Leclerc once again

Of course, the Briton has a home advantage: Hamilton and Silverstone – it’s a perfect match. With nine wins there, Hamilton holds the record for the most victories at any circuit. But there seems to be more to it than that. In recent races, Hamilton has been flying – whilst Leclerc has struggled. That was the case in Monaco (2nd vs DNF), Barcelona (win vs DNF) and also – albeit on a different scale – in Spielberg (5th vs 8th).

Leclerc: Lacking composure and feel

Why is Leclerc slower than Hamilton? In short: the Monegasque doesn’t know himself. After the sprint qualifying, Leclerc said: “That’s what I’m working on at the moment. Of course, I’ve realised for some time now that I’m not as relaxed in the car as I was last year. Even when I’m pushing, when I’m pulling everything together, we’re talking about hundredths of a second here, and Lewis is more often able to extract 100 per cent of the car’s potential, which simply isn’t the case for me.”

Leclerc, who is now 46 points behind Hamilton in the World Championship standings, added: “I really need to work on everything, but I think the most important thing is simply the feel for this car. If you don’t quite have that feel, it’s difficult to set the lap times, go into qualifying with confidence and push the car to its limits. I’m already struggling to give 100 per cent consistently.”

On Friday at Silverstone, that meant: “In Q1 and Q2 I was close, I was quite confident going into Q3, but as Q3 approached, I lost the feel for the car. I just don’t feel the car as well as I should.”

Ferrari surprised by its own team performance

Ferrari were generally surprised by the performance. Team principal Fred Vasseur had played down expectations ahead of the sprint qualifying session. Leclerc: “We’re extremely surprised that Lewis took pole today, but generally speaking we’d expected to be much further off the pace of the cars ahead of us, so this is a good step forward.”