Leclerc knows the pressure’s on to match Hamilton

Charles Leclerc has acknowledged he has to get on terms with Lewis Hamilton after being outperformed by his teammate across the past three race weekends.

Hamilton took his first Ferrari victory in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix last Sunday, following back-to-back second-place finishes in Canada and Monaco. To varying degrees, Hamilton had the upper hand over Leclerc on all three occasions, and after retiring from Sunday’s race the Monegasque driver says he needs to find ways of extracting the same level of performance.

“I mean, it's great for the team, it's great for Lewis,” Leclerc said. “The team has been pushing massively to bring upgrades and it seems to be working fine, so now I've got to be with him up there – which hasn't been the case since Canada.

“Fred [Vasseur, team principal] deserves it as much as the whole team [that] has been working massively hard and I'm very happy for them, but surely the main feeling I'll have getting home is disappointment, because it's been a very difficult weekend for me. I've lost significant points on my side, so I've got to do a pretty exceptional job from the next race to the end [of the season], with the upgrades coming for our side.”

Leclerc had recovered from a crash in qualifying to run in fifth place when he hit trouble with five laps remaining in Barcelona, but felt Ferrari didn’t fully deliver on its strengths during the race.

“I lost the power steering. And with the VSC I don't know if it would have changed significantly our race; maybe P4 could have been on the cards but the two-stops, I think, was a bit of a mistake on my side. I think the three-stop was a bit better. It wouldn't have changed massively, the biggest problem was starting P10 and that was on me, and then obviously the technical problem at the end – we'll look at what happened.

“I think we did a big step forward with the car this weekend, particularly on tire degradation, so that is a good thing for the future. It's also true that it's exaggerated on a weekend like this where tire degradation was so high.”