Charles Leclerc admits Ferrari F1 pace ‘worse than expected’ at Italian GP

Charles Leclerc admitted that Ferrari’s race pace at the Italian Grand Prix was “a little bit worse” than expected after missing out on a podium finish.

Leclerc finished fourth at Monza, just over four seconds behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.

Leclerc fought hard on-track in the opening few laps as he tried to keep Piastri at bay.

The Ferrari simply didn’t have the pace of the McLaren or Red Bull, settling into fourth-place.

After resisting pressure from George Russell, Leclerc enjoyed a quiet second half of the race.

Reflecting on the race at Monza, Leclerc said that he doesn’t have “any regrets” for how he raced given the pace of the Ferrari car overall.

“It was a nice battle. I felt like I was overtaking when he was doing a mistake and he was overtaking me when I did a mistake,” Leclerc said.

“They just had more pace than I did. I tried things that I think weren’t in the car and I lost the rear multiple times. That meant I couldn’t hope for much better unfortunately.

“I tried. I don’t have any regrets. Unfortunately today the pace of the car was a little bit worse than what we expected.”

Will Ferrari be better elsewhere?

There’s now just eight races remaining this year.

Charles Leclerc and Ferrari have typically performed well in Baku, Singapore and Las Vegas over the years.

Leclerc feels he could be better at these tracks, but doubts Ferrari will ever have the pace to beat McLaren on merit.

“Baku is a track I love which I’ve been very strong in the past but in the race, it’s a track that’s very easy to overtake,” he explained.

“If you don’t have the race pace in the race you can definitely feel it. That’s going to be tricky. Then you’ve got Singapore where qualifying is very important and the race is more difficult to overtake - I love this track as well. I think Singapore, maybe Baku and Las Vegas, maybe are the three tracks we’re closer to winning a race but that doesn’t mean we go there as favourites.

“We go there as third favourites. If Red Bull struggles for a reason or another, maybe second force but never the first one so it’s always going to be quite uphill and difficult.”