Charles Leclerc defended Ferrari's performance in today's Hungarian Grand Prix, despite finishing the race in seventh place just ahead of his team mate Carlos Sainz, saying it had actually been a good result in difficult circumstances.
Leclerc would have finished one place higher if not for incurring a post-race penalty for speeding in pit lane. And in his first stop, a problem with a wheel gun cost him time and position.
“The [first] pit stop was quite slow and [later] we had a five seconds penalty for speeding in the pit lane,” Leclerc explained. “So it’s again a weekend that is difficult.
“Honestly it’s frustrating overall," he admitted to the media in the paddock at the Hungaroring after the finish of today's race. "Today I feel like the result is much worse than what it felt like.
"When you are feeling like you are doing a good job with a car you have, nobody really notices it. And whenever you are doing a bad job, everybody notices it."
The first set back was coming out of a problematic initial pit lane running behind Aston Martin's Lance Stroll because of the delay.
“The first stint felt pretty good," he said. "I was quite happy with my pace, we were managing things really well and keeping up with the cars ahead.
"Then with the slow stop it really put us on the back foot being behind Lance," he explained. "I had to push to recover some positions, then we were with Carlos and we lost a bit of time there.
"The penalty we got after the second stop was another thing that made things more difficult, so all in all, it wasn’t a great day.
“Then in the third stint I pushed again and there again the car felt quite okay. So I feel like the result looks worse than what it actually is, but it’s clear that compared to Lando especially we are still behind.”
“Now we are on the back foot and it’s been confirmed since the last three weekends, so there’s a lot of work to do again," he said, adding that they needed to “do a step forward, as McLaren did”.
Leclerc revealed other problems that he had faced during the afternoon.
“I had no water,” he said. “Just before the start I realised that the tube was too short so I couldn’t reach the water, so it was really frustrating.
“We also had a lot of problems with the radio,” he continued. ”One out of four words is not understood by an engineer because there’s been problems with our radio [for] three or four races, so we need to fix that.
“Obviously my tone of voice is quite high because I need to make myself heard, but I just wanted to make sure that they didn't understand me wrong."
It meant that in-race discussions about strategy were problematic. "I wanted to go aggressive early and not aggressive late, so it was just about clarifying because of our radio issues.”
Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur agreed that it was a poor result for the team today after "a complicated race with Charles" today.
"He lost around seven seconds at the pit stop, which was a massive delay, because of an issue with a wheel-gun," Vasseur confirmed. "This also put him in traffic. Then there was also the five second pit lane speeding penalty.
"We showed we had the potential on Friday, but then we did not build on it for Saturday or today in the race," he acknowledged.
"I have the feeling that we are not that far off the pace in terms of performance, but we did not put everything together over the whole weekend."
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