{"id":182515,"date":"2025-10-07T00:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T00:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/182515\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T00:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T00:14:11","slug":"were-passengers-amid-ongoing-ferrari-f1-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/182515\/","title":{"rendered":"“We’re passengers” amid ongoing Ferrari F1 struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Leclerc<\/a> says he and Lewis Hamilton<\/a> are \u201cpassengers\u201d of Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s Formula 1 car, as they can\u2019t outperform it to get back to the podium positions.<\/p>\n

Ferrari has had tough weekends in Baku and Singapore, where the top five eluded the Scuderia in both qualifying and the race, with the lack of pace compounded by significant braking issues at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom lap 8, basically, it was all about managing those brakes,\u201d Leclerc said after finishing sixth in Singapore, while Hamilton took eighth place. \u201cI think everybody has to manage, to a certain extent, on a track like this. But I think we were on the worst side of things and that makes it extremely difficult. Our whole race was very tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

In Baku, Leclerc had let Hamilton through to give him a chance to attack the cars in front, but the Briton failed to cede the position back to his team-mate. He was scheduled to do it in Singapore instead, but worsening braking problems meant he dropped behind Leclerc anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don’t think that this is the biggest problem of the team at the moment,\u201d the Monegasque however insisted.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we don’t have the race car to fight with the guys in front. McLaren<\/a> has always had the same gap on us compared to the beginning of the year. Red Bull did a step from Monza and had the same level of McLaren. Mercedes<\/a> now is at the same level of McLaren and Red Bull, and then there’s us.<\/p>\n

\"Charles <\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari<\/p>\n

Photo by: Shameem Fahath \/ Motorsport Network<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not easy, obviously, because you want to fight for better positions. But at the moment, it just feels like we’re kind of passengers to the car and we cannot extract much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u2018passenger\u2019 feeling probably extends to the SF-25\u2019s behaviour, which Leclerc described as understeery, yet \u201cstill very snappy and unpredictable\u201d, after qualifying.<\/p>\n

Hence his pessimism regarding the last six rounds of the campaign: \u201cThe picture we’ve seen this weekend is going to be what the rest of the season looks like for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

This is difficult to swallow for the 27-time polesitter and eight-time grand prix winner, who had not experienced such a lack of performance since the 2021 season \u2013 especially after Ferrari missed out to McLaren by 14 points for the 2024 constructors\u2019 title.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, coming from a year like last year, where you are fighting for the world constructors\u2019 championship and then you come here with high expectations, you come low of your expectations from the beginning and you don’t even see a progression throughout the year, it’s not easy,\u201d Leclerc admitted, though he reiterated his unwavering drive to overcome this hardship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot of energy, but that doesn’t demotivate me. It motivates me, if anything, much more to try and turn the situation around.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc says he and Lewis Hamilton are \u201cpassengers\u201d of Ferrari\u2019s Formula 1 car, as they can\u2019t outperform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1665,1687,831,372,6537,80756,67596,67497,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-182515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-leclerc-were-passengers-amid-ongoing-ferrari-f1-struggles","tag-marina-bay-street-circuit","tag-singapore-gp","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}