Charles Leclerc, F1 driver

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has admitted his team doesn't have the outright speed to challenge McLaren for this years' constructors' championship, but hopes it will still be in the mix through consistency.While McLaren has been the form team in F1, taking over from Red Bull, Ferrari's resurgence in recent races has allowed it to remain in outside contention for the world championship.With six ...

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Charles Leclerc felt Ferrari "threw everything in the bin" with its tyre temperatures in the final part of Q3 for the Singapore Grand Prix, and reckoned he lost second on the grid due to insufficient warm-up.The Monegasque said that his confidence in the SF-24 car was renewed after a bruising FP3 in which Ferrari seemed to be suddenly off the pace, as the cooler temperatures in qualifying played ...

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Lando Norris was fastest in the second Formula 1 practice session at the Singapore Grand Prix, maintaining a tight battle with Charles Leclerc at the top of the timing boards.Norris led the way with a 1m30.727s time as the two were separated by just 0.058 seconds, and with over half-a-second's gap over the rest of the field at the end of the session.Amid the early runs on medium and hard tyres, as ...

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Charles Leclerc headlined the first Formula 1 practice session of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, beating Lando Norris by a 0.076-second margin.Norris spent the early laps turning the pace up on the medium tyres, setting a 1m33.903s and following that up with a 1m33.199s, a time that went largely untouched for the next five minutes.The Ferraris were circulating on the hard tyre amid their early ...

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Charles Leclerc says Ferrari was caught out by McLaren's top speed in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as he labelled his rival's flexible rear wing a "controversial" design.The Monegasque driver was locked in a race-long battle with Oscar Piastri for victory in Baku last weekend, but his hopes of a triumph were dashed just a few laps from home when his rear tyres faded.Having reflected on the factors ...

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A new technical intrigue has arisen in the aftermath of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with McLaren's rear wing under the spotlight.Footage from the rear-facing onboard camera on Oscar Piastri's MCL38 showed the upper flap distorting under load, with the most visible aspect of this being the outer leading edge of the upper flap which tilts upwards as speed builds.This could potentially give rise to a ...

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Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc admitted he didn't defend well enough against Oscar Piastri as he lost an Azerbaijan Grand Prix win to the McLaren driver following a scintillating duel.Leclerc started on pole for the fourth consecutive time on the streets of Baku, but after the only pitstop sequence of the race, second-placed Piastri made an audacious lunge into Turn 1 on lap 20 to snatch the lead ...

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Charles Leclerc has admitted there is no "magic answer" to his Baku brilliance after he charged to a fourth consecutive Azerbaijan Grand Prix pole position.The winner in Monza last time out, the Monegasque recovered from crashing out in FP1 on Friday to put his Ferrari on pole once again, having previously done so in the last three years.But Leclerc has been unable to translate any of those ...

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Charles Leclerc’s brilliant tyre management was critical to his Italian Grand Prix victory for Ferrari.But on a day when rival McLaren was left ruing the missed opportunity it had to secure a 1-2 finish, differences in car performance also played a big part in what happened.McLaren’s nervousness about being able to eke out a one-stop with its MCL38 was in contrast to a confidence Ferrari had ...

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Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc produced a stunning 33-lap run of lap time consistency to win Formula 1’s 2024 Italian Grand Prix, which has evoked memories of other such famous moments from motorsport history. In the 2022 Mexican GP, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen managed 38 straight laps in the same lap time bracket (1m38s), while the 1983 Le Mans 24 Hours ended with Porsche 956 cars remarkably ...

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Ferrari believes Charles Leclerc being undercut by Lando Norris boosted his chances to take a momentous home win for the team at the Italian Grand Prix.Following an on-the-edge lap-one pass by team-mate Oscar Piastri, polesitter Norris lost enough momentum to cede second place to Leclerc, who then split the McLarens during the opening stint.On lap 15 Norris was the first of the frontrunners to ...

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Charles Leclerc delighted Ferrari's home crowd in a strategic triumph to beat Oscar Piastri to victory at the Italian Grand Prix, after hanging on to the tyres in a one-stop strategy.Leclerc managed to hold on from a rapidly closing Piastri, who had much fresher tyres thanks to a two-stop strategy, and crossed the line with a 2.884-second lead - the crowd becoming more audibly ecstatic in the ...

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Lando Norris secured his second Formula 1 victory with a dominant performance at the Dutch Grand Prix to beat Max Verstappen at his home race.Despite losing the lead into the first corner, Norris recovered from that to pass Verstappen and immediately started to build a break over the Red Bull to ensure he had a considerable cushion in hand over the Dutchman - crossing the line with a 22.9-second ...

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Charles Leclerc has declared his 0.909s gap to Lando Norris’s Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix pole lap time for McLaren was “too much” for Ferrari.The Scuderia, which has slipped behind Mercedes and McLaren in the battle to get on terms with Red Bull since Leclerc commandingly won at Monaco in May, has endured a tricky Zandvoort weekend so far.Carlos Sainz missed much of FP2 due to a gearbox ...

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Charles Leclerc says it's "always good news" teaming up with a driver of Lewis Hamilton's calibre, as will be the case at Ferrari from the 2025 Formula 1 season.Ferrari signed Hamilton before the 2024 campaign even started, with team principal Frederic Vasseur making the most of an exit clause in the long-time Mercedes driver's contract to entice him to Maranello.Hamilton will replace Carlos Sainz ...

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Frederic Vasseur has changed the culture at Ferrari for the better since taking over as its Formula 1 team principal, according to Charles Leclerc.Vasseur took the reins of the Scuderia in January 2023 and implemented his trademark no-bullshit approach, after years of Ferrari being criticised not just for lacking performance but also for repeating errors and not always maximising its results under ...

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Charles Leclerc says Ferrari has made genuine progress with updates to its 2024 Formula 1 car, although the side-effect of bouncing has severely masked the improvements to the SF-24.When Ferrari introduced a new floor to the Spanish Grand Prix, the change in aerodynamic properties of the floor appeared to exacerbate an already-present level of bouncing in the car. This has been at its worst in ...

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Charles Leclerc feels Ferrari cannot be satisfied with his best result since his 2024 Monaco win, as his fourth position on-the-road in Formula 1’s Belgian Grand Prix came adrift of the race-winning Mercedes cars.Ferrari started the season as Red Bull’s closest challenger but has since slipped behind McLaren and Mercedes after its Barcelona upgrades backfired.The Italian team had worked hard ...

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That means Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc will start from the front of the grid, ahead of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes after the one-hour qualifying session, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3.Belgian Grand Prix grid: Leclerc on pole from ...

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Max Verstappen topped qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, where Ferrari's Charles Leclerc made a surprise late leap to second and deny Sergio Perez the pole inherited around Verstappen's grid drop.In a wet session where the drivers used the intermediate tyres throughout, the teams were split on how they approached Q3, with Verstappen and the Ferrari drivers stopping to switch to fresh inters ...

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Charles Leclerc thinks this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix could be the race where Ferrari's bouncing issues are the "most visible" as it readies the latest batch of fixes.Ferrari's Barcelona upgrade package came with a new floor that induced bouncing in high-speed corners, an issue which contributed to it drifting away from Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes on higher speed circuits.The Scuderia ...

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Carlos Sainz opened the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend with the fastest time in FP1, over a quarter of a second clear of Formula 1 championship leader Max Verstappen.Sainz posted a 1m18.713s amid a flurry of soft-tyre runs at the start of the session's second half, beating an earlier benchmark set by team-mate Charles Leclerc.High track temperatures had pushed the mercury above 58C, creating ...

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Charles Leclerc labelled his current Formula 1 hardships as "worse than a nightmare", as an early call for intermediate tyres at the British Grand Prix cost him any chance of scoring points.The Monegasque driver was running seventh in the opening third of the Silverstone race having passed Lance Stroll into Stowe on lap 13, and was looking to make greater strides up the order before light rain ...

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Charles Leclerc's failure to set a lap time in Formula 1's Austrian Grand Prix sprint SQ3 was caused by an anti-stall problem aboard his Ferrari cutting its engine.Leclerc pulled out of the queue for sprint qualifying's top 10 runners as they massed at the end of the pitlane with the clocking ticking down at the Red Bull Ring, where Max Verstappen would go on to claim the top spot on the grid for ...

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Charles Leclerc accused Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz of wanting to do "something spectacular" for his Formula 1 career as the two came to blows at the Spanish Grand Prix.Sainz had a run on Leclerc at the end of the second lap and put a move on him into Turn 1 around the outside, as Leclerc sat at the inside kerb at the opening right hander.Leclerc's front wing clipped Sainz's rear right wheel ...

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