Charles Leclerc said Ferrari endured a “very, very difficult Friday” in Brazil after the team finished FP2 in sixth and seventh, marking the first time all season it had ended a Friday outside the top five. For a team that had been fastest in Friday practice at three of the previous four races, the shift at Interlagos was a clear reversal.
Leclerc’s own pace was not enough to hide the wider picture. He was behind Lewis Hamilton on the timesheet, while Ferrari also said it had a lot of work to do on balance after a day that looked unusually messy by its own recent standards.
Leclerc: the car felt strange and very poor
Leclerc did not try to dress it up. He described the Ferrari as “strange” and “very poor”, saying the team was losing time on the straights but also struggling in the corners, where it normally expects to be strong.
“We were losing in the straights, but I think the car in the corners just felt probably one of the worst Friday feelings of the season,” he said. “So I think there’s a lot to be found in corners, more than in the straights, where we know we have a deficit. Normally we are very fast in corners and today was not the case.”
That is what makes the day so notable. Ferrari can live with a straight-line deficit if the rest of the package is stable, but Leclerc’s comments suggest the balance was off across the lap.
Vasseur says the balance must be fine-tuned
Fred Vasseur gave a similar reading, saying Ferrari had “a lot of work to do on the balance” and that the drivers “were not happy”. He also made clear that the team was not panicking, insisting he was “not less optimistic than last week”.
Vasseur pointed to a couple of deployment issues in the lap and said Leclerc had lost “a couple of tenths in a straight line” on his fastest effort. He added that the car simply did not sit right on the Brazilian track surface, saying the tarmac was “the opposite of one week ago” and that it was “creating a lot of work to do and a difference compared to last week”.
His message was calm, but the verdict was blunt: “The balance was not good.”
Why this Friday matters more than the timing screen
Vasseur also cautioned against overreacting to the headline order, saying it was “not a drama” and that there was “more for you [the media] to be focused on page one [of the timing screen], but we are not.” That fits the bigger Ferrari picture. The team has been unusually strong on Fridays recently, so a poor day in Brazil is more worrying than one isolated result might suggest.
There were positives elsewhere in the paddock, with McLaren’s Friday upgrades viewed positively in the same practice report. Lando Norris felt the car looked “pretty good” and “a little bit more straightforward to drive”, while Randy Singh said the team was “really well” and “immediately on the pace”.
For Ferrari, though, the focus now is simple. Brazil was a reminder that Friday pace can disappear quickly, and Leclerc’s remarks make clear that Interlagos has handed the team a very different kind of challenge before the weekend really begins.
