Charles Leclerc makes ‘aggressive’ Ferrari demand in key F1 battleground

Charles Leclerc has urged Ferrari to “keep being aggressive” with the development of its 2026 Formula 1 car as it looks to rein in Mercedes. 

Ferrari suffered an underwhelming Hungarian Grand Prix, with Leclerc taking fourth ahead of penalised team-mate Lewis Hamilton on a weekend the team started with a 1-2 in Friday practice. 

After appearing to be the early favourite in Hungary, Hamilton was pipped to pole position by Lando Norris in his heavily-upgraded McLaren, before the Italian team’s victory challenge faded in the race. 

Norris claimed a resounding first win of the season for McLaren, and Leclerc was quick to point to the reigning world champions’ impressive development as being key to its strong performance. 

“It's a championship again that, every upgrade is so much more significant than in the past because it makes us do such a big step forward,” Leclerc told reporters after Sunday’s grand prix. 

“We've seen it with McLaren this weekend. So it's going to be important that we stay on top of it and that we keep being aggressive, as aggressive as we've been with the development program. And we'll see how it goes in Zandvoort.” 

Leclerc acknowledged that the correlation between expectation and results ultimately failed to align for Ferrari. 

“It’s a disappointing weekend, and I think the thing that is standing out for me after the last three races is that out of the last three races, there were two races where we were expecting to struggle and we finished first and second. In the race where we expected to do well, we finished fourth and fifth,” Leclerc said. 

“So there’s clearly a tendency, and it’s not that one car is doing well because it’s doing exceptionally well in the car.

“I mean, both cars seem to have that tendency of being good in the weekend where we expected to struggle and struggling in the weekend where we thought we would be good.

“So this has to be understood. I mean, it’s also true that with a good start today, things could have looked very differently because on a track like this, there’s not much overtaking.”

Summarising the race itself, Leclerc added: "We paid the price with the start; however, we weren't particularly stellar at any point in the race. 

"The first stint on hards wasn't too bad, the last stint on the soft was pretty good, but there were too many ups and downs, and that is where we need to work: to try and find that consistency with this car.

"It has been very tricky on some stints for Lewis and some others with me; it is just a little bit strange how uncorrelated everything is.”