Leclerc concerned Ferrari will “really struggle” in wet weather conditions · F1 · RaceFans

Charles Leclerc is concerned about Ferrari’s potential if today’s Belgian Grand Prix is run in wet weather conditions.

Rain is forecast throughout Sunday at Spa-Francorchamps. Leclerc endured a poor race at Silverstone in wet conditions, falling from sixth on the grid to finish 14th after gambling unsuccessfully on an early switch to slick tyres.

“Wet weather, we were speaking about it in the last race weekend, I don’t think it’s a strength for our car at the moment,” said Leclerc after qualifying. “We are really struggling.

“But having said that, every weekend is different. We’ll learn from the past and see what’s possible tomorrow.”

Leclerc qualified third on the grid at Spa but is not confident he will be able to take on the McLarens ahead of him. “I will only be able to tell after the first few laps to see where we are,” he said. “But I’ll try to look forward before looking in mirrors.”

He admitted he did not expect to qualify as far up as he did after pipping Max Verstappen to third place by three thousandths of a second.

“I think we expected to be [fourth] but with a significant gap in front. At the end, the gap is still significant, but a little bit less than what we initially expected, so that’s positive.

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“We brought upgrades this weekend which have been working since the beginning, but we had to do some fine-tuning from yesterday to today. It’s going in the right direction, so I’m very happy.

“I think it was also a really good lap. I don’t think I left much on the table with the potential we had today, so for that I’m happy as well. However it’s only [third], so now we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

Lewis Hamilton finished fourth for Ferrari at Silverstone. On Thursday Leclerc said it had been useful to get his team mate’s experience of driving Mercedes’ car in wet weather conditions to understand where Ferrari are lacking.

“With the team we’re working really, really hard in order to try and turn the situation around in wet weather because our car is unbelievably difficult to drive in those conditions. And it’s also interesting now to have Lewis’s experience coming from another team.

“So there’s a lot of work in the background on that to try and turn the situation around because it’s a very difficult situation to be in and to be driving with the car that we have at the moment.”

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