Charles Leclerc confessed Ferrari’s race pace at the Italian Grand Prix was “a little bit worse” than anticipated after falling short of the podium in front of the roaring Tifosi.
Leclerc brought his Ferrari home in fourth, just over four seconds behind Oscar Piastri’s McLaren.
In the opening laps, he fought hard to hold off Piastri, but the Ferrari simply lacked the firepower of the McLaren and Red Bull machines, leaving him to settle into fourth.
After fending off pressure from George Russell, Leclerc endured a relatively quiet second half of the race.
Reflecting on his Monza outing, Leclerc insisted he had “no regrets” about how he raced given the car’s limitations.
“It was a nice battle. I felt like I was overtaking when he was doing a mistake and he was overtaking me when I did a mistake,” Leclerc said.
“They just had more pace than I did. I tried things that I think weren’t in the car and I lost the rear multiple times. That meant I couldn’t hope for much better unfortunately.”
“I tried. I don’t have any regrets. Unfortunately today the pace of the car was a little bit worse than what we expected.”
Can Ferrari Shine Elsewhere?
Eight races remain on the 2025 calendar.
Ferrari and Leclerc have traditionally performed well at Baku, Singapore, and Las Vegas — and the Monegasque feels those venues could offer him stronger chances. But he doubts Ferrari will have enough raw pace to beat McLaren outright.
“Baku is a track I love which I’ve been very strong in the past but in the race, it’s a track that’s very easy to overtake,” he explained.
“If you don’t have the race pace in the race you can definitely feel it. That’s going to be tricky. Then you’ve got Singapore where qualifying is very important and the race is more difficult to overtake – I love this track as well. I think Singapore, maybe Baku and Las Vegas, maybe are the three tracks we’re closer to winning a race but that doesn’t mean we go there as favourites.”
“We go there as third favourites. If Red Bull struggles for a reason or another, maybe second force but never the first one so it’s always going to be quite uphill and difficult.”
