Charles Leclerc makes major Monza admission as Ferrari ready fresh upgrade package

While Ferrari will introduce upgrades for the SF-24 at Monza, Charles Leclerc doubts they can contend for victory in front of the tifosi.

F1 2024 has seen McLaren and Mercedes rise to end the Red Bull dominance, with Ferrari seemingly positioning themselves firmly in that mix after Leclerc’s Monaco victory, but the Scuderia has been unable to kick on from there, with upgrades introduced two rounds later at the Spanish Grand Prix proving a setback for the team.

Charles Leclerc doubts Ferrari has Italian GP-winning performance

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

The Spanish GP upgrades brought with them porpoising issues for Ferrari, the team since looking to recover ground. The last two races have yielded positive signs in that regard, with Leclerc claiming back-to-back P3 finishes at Spa and Zandvoort.

However, despite this upturn, and the fact that Ferrari will introduce further upgrades for their home race, the Italian GP, Leclerc doubts they can deliver a victory for their expectant tifosi.

Asked by media, including PlanetF1.com in a pre-Italian GP press conference, if those back-to-back podiums give him confidence going into his home race, Leclerc replied: “I mean, I don’t let the last two races change our expectations. We are in a difficult moment for the team. We are struggling a little bit with pace at the moment.

“I think we understood quite a few things since Zandvoort, especially on what happened on Saturday, where our performance was quite far from ideal. But on the Sunday, it was a good race. In Spa it was good as well.

“Here, it should be a bit more in the direction of Spa, so hopefully we’ll be a bit more in the fight for the podium. However, for the win, I don’t think we quite have that yet.

“I think we are in a better position than on a higher downforce track. So it should be a bit better. How much better, it’s still to be seen.

“We’ll also have some upgrades on the car which should go in the right direction. So hopefully when we put everything together, we are closer than where we were in the last few races.”

While Leclerc was in no mood to discuss in detail how Ferrari hope these Monza upgrades will improve the SF-24, he did claim that Monza will not be the best judge of their effectiveness.

“Let’s say that there were very specific characteristics of the car that we had to improve,” he said. “I’m not going to go too much into details, and this where those upgrades should help us. Then we’ll see, because I don’t think Monza is the best track to judge those upgrades.

“Probably Baku or Singapore will be more of a test for us, but it should go in the right direction anyway. But by how much, I don’t know yet.”

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Leclerc’s team-mate Carlos Sainz hopes that these upgrades will make the porpoising problems “go away” for Ferrari, so that they can return their focus to adding downforce and thus performance to the SF-24.

Asked by media including PlanetF1.com whether Ferrari have needed to run the SF-24 in a compromised way ahead of these upgrades to avoid the porpoising, Sainz replied: “Not very compromised, but a little bit.

“I hope that once we unlock or discover what is the actual thing that is generating this porpoising, which I feel like we are a step behind there in understanding that, hopefully, with this new floor or new upgrades that we will bring soon, these problems go away, and we can just focus in adding downforce to the car.

“But only the upgrades will tell. If the upgrades do what we expect them to do, it will prove that we understand it.

“If not, we need to keep digging.”

Monza has been resurfaced ahead of the 2024 Italian GP staging, so while Ferrari were “very good last year” here as Sainz made the podium, he warns that a “very different Monza” will greet the drivers this time around.

But, unlike Leclerc, he is not shutting down the idea of fighting for the win.

“It’s been resurfaced, Monza, so we will find a very different Monza to the last few years,” said Sainz.

“So I think we need to wait and see, but I hope that Monza is one of those weekends where we can get both cars in the podium or in the top five.

“And whether we can fight for the win or not, we will see.”

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