After weeks of difficulties behind the wheel of his SF-26, Charles Leclerc identified a key detail that allowed him to regain better feelings and clinch victory in Great Britain.
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Charles Leclerc has finally lifted part of the veil on the turning point that allowed Ferrari to take a step forward at the British Grand Prix. After several complicated races during which he struggled to find the right balance with his SF-26, the Monegasque found a solution that completely changed his feeling behind the wheel.
The Silverstone weekend had, however, started worryingly. Distanced by his new teammate Lewis Hamilton during the first sessions, Leclerc had again suffered the domination of the seven-time world champion during the Sprint race. Hamilton had taken pole position for the Sprint and finished second, while Leclerc was more than three tenths behind in qualifying.
But the situation reversed during the Grand Prix qualifying. The Ferrari driver managed to beat Hamilton by nearly two tenths before dominating the main race and securing his first victory since the 2024 United States Grand Prix.
Behind this spectacular comeback was an adjustment found during data analysis on Friday evening.
“A very difficult detail to quantify” that changed everything
Leclerc explains that he did not discover a miracle solution, but rather a specific element that improved his interaction with the car.
“It’s very difficult to explain, because there isn’t a precise moment when you realize everything you were doing wrong. There is a lot of work to understand in the data what made me less comfortable with these cars” he explained to the media.
“But there was a moment on Friday evening at Silverstone when I saw a detail and I said to myself: ‘Okay, it’s very difficult to quantify, but if I manage to change that to better match my expectations, then my feeling should probably be much better.'”
The Monegasque then applied this modification before Saturday’s qualifying, with immediate results.
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“I did it on Saturday afternoon and the car was much better. Unfortunately, I can’t give more details, so I don’t know if it would make much sense to try to explain without revealing the details, but it’s based on very subtle things.”
A necessary adaptation to the new 2026 F1 cars
Leclerc also emphasizes that the current single-seaters require extreme precision in driving. With the new regulations, the slightest variation in power usage or acceleration phases can have significant consequences.
“With these cars, you sometimes have to be careful, because the loss of performance can be quite significant. If you’re not efficient, if you don’t accelerate cleanly or if you lack consistency, it quickly becomes complicated.”
According to him, these small deviations can then disrupt the entire driving chain.
“Your speed in the next corner becomes different, it changes your braking point, and you constantly have to readjust your references. It makes things very, very difficult.”
Leclerc therefore believes that several adjustments made at Silverstone allowed him to better exploit the Ferrari.
“There was probably a bit of all that, then a few small things I changed at Silverstone to better adapt to this generation of cars and make my driving easier. It made the situation significantly better.”
As Ferrari now seeks to confirm its level at Spa-Francorchamps, Leclerc knows the real challenge will be to reproduce this chemistry rather than consider the British victory as a mere flash in the pan.
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