{"id":189899,"date":"2025-10-04T16:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T16:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/189899\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T16:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T16:41:07","slug":"ferrari-not-anywhere-close-to-rivals-after-singapore-gp-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/189899\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari “not anywhere close” to rivals after Singapore GP qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferrari<\/a> driver Charles Leclerc<\/a> has lamented a poor Singapore Grand Prix weekend so far, having qualified seventh at a Formula 1 track where he is a two-time polesitter.<\/p>\n

Leclerc was second-fastest in Free Practice 1 but dropped to ninth and 10th in the next two sessions, before taking eighth, sixth and seventh across the three qualifying segments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got off to a good start in FP1,\u201d Leclerc explained to Canal+. \u201cThen we had to make some tweaks, and unfortunately we\u2019ve been struggling since FP2 \u2013 especially me, I must say, as I was nowhere in FP2 and FP3.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been completely unable to feel the car over the last two weekends, and what\u2019s weird is that has been on street circuits where I typically am rather confident. We need to work and understand what\u2019s wrong, because I\u2019m not at the level where I should be and we\u2019re losing points.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leclerc was outqualified by team-mate Lewis Hamilton<\/a> \u2013 whose performance he labelled \u201cimpeccable\u201d \u2013 for the first time since the British GP, with a lap 0.096s slower in Q3.<\/p>\n

This had much to do with the SF-25\u2019s behaviour, with Leclerc explaining to Sky Sports F1 that he was \u201creally, really struggling to find the grip\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Charles <\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari<\/p>\n

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of understeer on the car, but the car is still very snappy and unpredictable, and I know that it’s not my strength whenever there’s understeer in the car,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis weekend [it] has been the case from FP2 to qualifying, and we don’t really find any ways out without making the car even more unpredictable, which is not what you want on a city track, so it’s been a very, very tough weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

This follows another tricky weekend in Baku \u2013 a track where Leclerc took four consecutive pole positions from 2021 to 2024 but was not in contention last time around, crashing out in Q3 and finishing the race ninth.<\/p>\n

Asked if his current struggle was circuit-specific, the Monegasque pondered: \u201cI hope it’s circuit-specific, but for now I don’t quite have the explanation, because it’s not like we changed massively the car in the last two races.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leclerc had been pinning his hopes on those two street tracks and is now looking to Las Vegas \u2013 \u201cmaybe\u201d \u2013 as Ferrari\u2019s main chance of victory in 2025, though he admittedly is \u201cless hopeful now\u201d, as he told written media in the post-qualifying pen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not anywhere close to being on the level of McLaren<\/a>, Red Bull and actually now Mercedes<\/a> \u2013 on some occasions, and actually quite recently, they’ve just been a step [ahead].\u201d<\/p>\n

Championship-wise, if the final classification of the Singapore GP were identical to the starting grid, Ferrari\u2019s deficit to second-placed Mercedes would balloon from four to 27 points, and Red Bull would be just 10 points away from the Scuderia \u2013 hence the aforementioned \u201cwe\u2019re losing points\u201d comment.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Sam Shephard<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has lamented a poor Singapore Grand Prix weekend so far, having qualified seventh at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,13275,817,826,813,816,120410,114904,37177,85],"class_list":["post-189899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-leclerc-ferrari-not-anywhere-close-to-rivals-after-singapore-gp-qualifying","tag-marina-bay-street-circuit","tag-singapore-gp","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}