A frustrated Charles Leclerc reflects on a tough Saturday at the Miami Grand Prix

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc endured a tough Saturday at the Miami Grand Prix

MIAMI, Florida — Saturday at the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix was one of those days for Charles Leclerc that you would rather forget.

On his way to the starting grid in the F1 Sprint race Leclerc, working around the circuit on a set of intermediate tires in wet conditions, slid off the racing line and into the barrier, ending his F1 Sprint race before it even began.

Then in qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix Leclerc could only manage to put his SF-25 on the fourth row, where he will start eighth and, as he noted when speaking to the media including SB Nation after the session, behind both Williams drivers.

When speaking with the media a downtrodden Leclerc began by reflecting on what happened on the buildup to the F1 Sprint race.

“The sprint race, I mean I’ve watched it quite a few times, honestly, I can drive around 100 times and there’s not much you can do as a driver,” said Leclerc. “I think the mistake was in the first place to be out on [intermediate] tires with those track conditions, and this we need to understand what we’ve done wrong as a team.

“I won’t go too deep into that, but obviously I think this was the main mistake that then cost us a lot. But yeah, obviously that made the whole day a lot more difficult for the mechanics, for me as well, not doing as many laps as others, but I don’t feel like I’ve paid the price of it today.”

Leclerc then shifted his attention to his qualifying performance.

“And then in qualifying we’re just not fast enough,” started the Ferrari driver.

“We’ve got to analyze there was something strange on our side. I had to change massively the car, the tools and everything in order to have kind of the balance I liked, it was very different, so we’ve got to look into what happened.”

What has Leclerc so frustrated at the moment? It is the fact that he feels he is extracting everything he can out of the SF-25 right now, but the results do not match up with how he feels after finishing a given lap. He might feel that he has put in the lap he needs to top the timing sheets, but the stopwatch then tells him otherwise.

“To be honest, this weekend I feel like, and that’s probably even more so frustrating, is that I feel we are maximizing the potential of the car.

“It’s just that the potential of the car is just not there and when I finish a lap, again today in qualifying, I feel very satisfied with my lap, and it’s only bringing up P8.

“So yeah, we’ve got to look at it, I think.”

Leclerc also highlighted that the characteristics of the circuit in Miami, with several low-speed corners, accentuates the current weaknesses of the SF-25 when compared to the rest of the grid.

“A track like this also highlights our weaknesses. There’s a lot of low-speed content. Williams, both Williams are in front of us and I consider my lap a good one, so I think, yeah, it’s pretty easy to understand where we are lacking.

“We are just not fast and whatever we do with the car, we can run it in different ways, but we just don’t have the downforce that the others have at the moment, especially at low speed.”

And with that, Leclerc was off, left to contemplate another frustrating Saturday.