Ferrari won’t ask Leclerc to drive more carefully

Jock Klia, chief race engineer at Ferrari, has learned a lot about his character during his time with Charles Leclerc, as he has also been responsible for his professional training since 2019. According to Klia, the mistakes and accidents that his 25-year-old ward makes on the tracks to some extent reflect his psychological state.

In Melbourne, Leclerc retired on the first lap of the race after colliding with Lance Stroll, in Baku he damaged his car in qualifying before Saturday’s sprint, although he still started from pole position, and in the final of qualifying in Miami, he had a more serious accident, which prevented him from moving higher. 7th starting position.

However, Ferrari is not going to call on Charles to fly more carefully and calmly. When asked about the Monegasque’s mistakes, Jock Clea replied: “Perhaps this reflects to some extent his psychological state, because he has to compete with the Red Bull drivers, who have clearly faster cars. He just strives to show what he is worth as a racer, but in the end, of course, the laws of physics are stronger.

But we are not going to tell him: “Listen, Charles, we should be quiet.” During the season, he demonstrates outstanding results in qualifying, which allows him to start in many races from very good positions, as was the case, in particular, in Baku.

In Miami, the car was not too difficult, it worked quite effectively, so he felt the opportunity to compete for pole position, but probably overdid it a bit.

While both Scuderia drivers complained about the SF-23’s unnecessarily nervous behavior last weekend, Klia is not prepared to agree that this is due to the car’s shortcomings.

“This is typical for all cars. Max Verstappen had the same problem in the qualifying final, he recalled. – The consequences were not so dramatic, but he had to break the circle, because the car lost stability when attacking the same curb in the 6th turn.

When a ground effect driven car attacks a curb, at some point it almost instantly loses a very significant percentage of the downforce. We saw how Charles’s Ferrari hit the bottom of the curb in the 6th turn, and at the same time it is very difficult to keep the car under control.

The irony is that this confirms that we were able to achieve an improvement in the behavior of the SF-23 at high speeds. In qualifying, Charles felt that in the last attempt he could compete for pole position, but he just drove more aggressively than he should have.