Alex Jacques suspects Charles Leclerc has lost his ‘greatest strength’ at Ferrari this year

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Formula 1 commentator Alex Jacques thinks Charles Leclerc has lost his ‘greatest strength’ at Ferrari this year.

Leclerc, 28, has endured a tough few weeks, having been convincingly beaten by Lewis Hamilton in Canada, Monaco, Barcelona and Austria. 

Currently, there’s a 46-point gap between Leclerc and Hamilton, with the seven-time world champion in fine form after securing his first win for Ferrari in Barcelona.

Meanwhile, Leclerc has been left searching for answers, having failed to finish in Monaco and Barcelona; the Monegasque finished eighth at the Austrian Grand Prix, nearly 20 seconds behind Hamilton. 

Heading into this weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Leclerc is again under pressure to deliver a much-improved performance.

Alex Jacques says Charles Leclerc is currently ‘lost’ at Ferrari

Speaking on the latest episode of the F1 Nation podcast, commentator Jacques suspects that the new generation of the sport has taken away Leclerc’s ‘greatest strength’. 

Jacques believes that the 28-year-old is not operating at his full capability and is not able to do what we know he is best at, which is delivering a stunning lap during qualifying.

He also likened Leclerc’s struggles to George Russell’s problems, citing whether the long gap between races earlier in the season meant the teams have gone down the wrong path.

Jacques explained: “I think he is lost, he is lost right now in terms of the direction of what these cars need.

“Doing research before this event, I found it really interesting to look at where George laid the blame for his form going slightly awry.

“He said the races being postponed gave the team and his side of the garage an unbelievably long time to dig into the data in the way that they wouldn’t normally have.

“So they went into the minuscule stuff and found themselves going down the wrong path. I wonder if the same thing has happened with Charles Leclerc’s side of the garage.

“We know he’s not operating at his capability; I wonder if these regulations have taken away possibly his greatest strength, which was Q3, absolutely dancing on the edge of the grip through the corners.

“He hasn’t quite calibrated and his side of the garage potentially going down the wrong path because it is Charles Leclerc at the moment on the back foot in a way that we’ve never seen at Ferrari.”

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Speaking ahead of the weekend, Leclerc made a grim prediction for what people can expect from Ferrari.

The 28-year-old stated that the Scuderia will most likely struggle at Silverstone, and he is not expecting the SF-26 to be ‘particularly strong’ this weekend.

Leclerc also likened the track to the Red Bull Ring, citing the amount of straights that have been Ferrari’s main issue in 2026.

As per F1, Leclerc said: “It’s a Sprint weekend which I quite enjoy, but at the same time, it’s not a weekend where we expect to be particularly strong.

“I think for the same reasons [as] Austria, where there were quite a lot of straights.

“Here it’s a lot more straights, not that many corners to recover energy, so I expect a difficult weekend on our side. Unfortunately, the next two weekends on paper are not very favourable to our car, but we’ll try our best.”