“I’ve been very poor” – Charles Leclerc’s damning assessment of his qualifying performance

Charles Leclerc has offered a damning assessment of his qualifying performance at the Dutch Grand Prix, with the Ferrari Formula 1 driver down in sixth. 

Leclerc has been off the pace all weekend with the Monegasque not yet finishing a session above sixth, continuing Ferrari’s difficult 2025 season thus far with it far behind leader McLaren. 

The Monegasque revealed Ferrari made “a lot” of changes on the car overnight, but there was little improvement with Leclerc two places behind what he thought was possible in qualifying. 

“I’m very disappointed with myself, to be honest,” Leclerc, who was 0.678s off polesitter Oscar Piastri, told Sky Sports.

“I haven’t done the job today and I’ve been very poor. The whole weekend has been a little bit on the backfoot on my side. I’ve been trying to change and to chase something that maybe wasn’t in the car this weekend for one reason or another. 

“We were losing a lot of lap time in two, three corners. I guess that kind of stayed the same during qualifying. Not to an extreme extent as much as in free practice but still we were losing.

“By trying to find something that wasn’t in the car, I think the consistency of the weekend had been hurt a little bit, and I just didn’t do a good job, especially in qualifying – I’m really not happy with my Q3 lap.”

This result comes after Leclerc qualified on pole last time out in Budapest, but his SF-25 felt “a lot” different from the Hungarian Grand Prix – where he eventually finished fourth.

Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was more upbeat though, despite being outqualified by Leclerc as the seven-time world champion will start in seventh for Sunday’s grand prix.

But it was Hamilton’s first Q3 appearance since July’s British Grand Prix, after a Q1 exit in Belgium and Q2 in Hungary, leaving him buoyed by the progress.

“It’s definitely encouraging, at least on my side of the garage, to have a better result,” said Hamilton. 

“The boys in the garage deserve it and the team deserve it, so I’m happy I could be there or thereabouts.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Andrea Diodato / NurPhoto via Getty Images

“But of course, we’re not where we want to be. To be seven tenths off, six-and-a-half tenths off in qualifying on a track like this, that’s a huge amount.

“We’ve got to try and understand what that is, because Charles was P1 in the last race. But naturally, we do still have that deficit.”

When asked where he thought Ferrari’s biggest deficit to McLaren was, Hamilton replied: “The biggest limit for us, I think, is a combination of things. But ultimately, we need more load to go through the corners as fast as McLaren here, for some reason.

“Now, is that load or is that coming from the tyres? It’s difficult to know. Maybe they get into the tyres in a different operating window to us, potentially. Or it’s a combination of both. Ultimately, I think McLaren definitely have more downforce than everybody. But they’re not very draggy.

“If we were to try and match them, we’d have to go up a couple of levels of wing, but have the efficiency of a lower wing and then it’s just a combination of getting the car to be more stable through a corner.

“I think the wind makes it really tricky. So you’ve got tailwinds into one and crosswinds in lots of different places. I think this car is to be quite sensitive to wind.”

Photos from Dutch GP – Practice & Qualifying