It has to change soon

Charles Leclerc and Ferrari can’t understand why they keep finishing behind Mercedes … but they’re not short of case studies.

The car upgrades Ferrari brought to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weren’t enough to lift Sebastian Vettel above third with Leclerc finishing fifth. The controversial team orders they had tried at the previous race in China – favouring Vettel over Leclerc – weren’t enough either.

With Vettel and Leclerc now 35 and 40 points respectively off championship leader Valtteri Bottas, something has to change soon.

“We need to look at our weaknesses, try to address them,” team principal Mattia Binotto said. Ferrari isn’t as bad as the standings suggest, he argued.

No win for Ferrari, four wins for Mercedes. “No doubt that they are very strong and certainly they’ve got, let me say, a slightly better car,” Binotto said. “But I think that the gap is not so big and the points, the results, are not reflecting the true potentials of the cars ... in the last race, yes, we were not as fast as them … but we didn’t finish 20 seconds behind.”

Leclerc has often looked the closest Ferrari driver to challenging Mercedes’ early drivers’ championship leader Bottas and reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton, even though he’s never won a race and Vettel has four world titles.

In Azerbaijan, Leclerc appeared the favourite for pole position before he crashed in qualifying. The Monaco driver started the race eighth but entertained with a string of early overtaking moves while Vettel struggled to keep up with Mercedes in third.

“At the moment, I’m not so unhappy with the car,” Leclerc said. “We maybe need to work a little bit on our race. I think in qualifying the car felt amazing. In the race, a little bit more balance problems but these were small issues.”

Leclerc came closest to a win in the season’s second race in Bahrain on the last weekend of March when he led before an engine fault dropped him to third.

Hamilton is no stranger to one team dominating a season, whether in the era of Vettel’s all-conquering Red Bulls or his all-Mercedes battles with Nico Rosberg.

Still, even he wants a stronger challenge from Ferrari.

“Hopefully, at some stage Ferrari will be in the mix with us. I do think they had the performance to be on the front row with both of their cars in the last race,” Hamilton said. “It takes 100 per cent to deliver throughout the weekend and I think we were as close to that as possible. They’re going to have to pick it up if they want to fight us.”

All eyes are on now this coming weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Ferrari had brought car upgrades to Baku’s street circuit, while the Mercedes remained unchanged. That boosted hopes of a comeback on a track where a very long straight section was thought to favour Ferrari. It wasn’t to be.

“We have a lot of races left. Hopefully, at some point we can say this was the turning-around, this was the decider,” Vettel told reporters.

Perhaps the coming weekend will see The Pracing Horse finally come up triumphs … or Ferrari could fully understand what the pain is in Spain.

After collapsing under pressure in the past two seasons, this may be Vettel’s last chance to show he can deliver a long-awaited Formula One title for Ferrari.

Otherwise, next season, the Italian team may throw its backing behind the young and ambitious Leclerc, touted as F1′s next big star and seemingly living up to the promise, along with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.