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George Russell insists Charles Leclerc hasn’t ‘forgotten how to drive’ despite the swing towards Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari garage.
Hamilton beat Leclerc for the fifth race in succession at the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday, finishing fifth while his teammate slipped to eighth.
Leclerc had been the quicker of the two in qualifying but he was overtaken by the sister car three times during a miserable race. With both drivers three-stopping, the gap at the end was almost 20 seconds.
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George Russell: Charles Leclerc is still trying to understand the Ferrari
Leclerc’s problems have arguably been overstated. The Ferrari qualifying head-to-head is tied at four apiece, and the Monegasque looked the quicker of the two until Canada.
But they have been on opposite trajectories for a number of races now, with Hamilton 46 points ahead in the championship. There has already been a 128-point swing compared to last season, when Leclerc was 86 clear.
Russell, who spent three years alongside Hamilton at Mercedes, says it’s simply a matter of Leclerc ‘understanding’ the SF-26 package.
“I’ve just seen it so clearly, looking at how Lewis has bounced back this year, looking at Leclerc, who’s one of the best qualifiers on the grid, how he struggled so much this year,” the Mercedes driver said in the post-race press conference.
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“We haven’t just forgotten how to drive or relearn how to drive. It’s just us understanding and getting on top of the package.
Russell was echoing a point he made in the post-qualifying presser 24 hours earlier, when Leclerc was sitting next to him: “For both of us, it has been challenging a lot at times.
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“But we haven’t just forgotten how to drive. And there is definitely an element of understanding what this car needs, what these tyres need in different conditions.”
Leclerc recently changed his brake set-up to mirror Hamilton, a sign of his discomfort in the Ferrari. His recent slump has included a string of high-profile mistakes, with crashes of varying significance in Miami, Monaco (x2) and Barcelona.
The eight-time Grand Prix winner has acknowledged that he’s lacking confidence, but while there have been calls for Ferrari to introduce a driver hierarchy, the team are unlikely to do so unless Hamilton becomes a serious title contender.
Based on their performance in Austria, they may not reach that level this year.
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