Following a surprising podium for Charles Leclerc last weekend thanks to Valtteri Bottas’ tyre failure with 3 laps to go, it’s back to reality for Ferrari at the second Silverstone event. 

Massive tyre problems on the soft in particular has led to a very difficult weekend to this point for Ferrari.  

Leclerc was 10th in Q1, 8th in Q2 and 9th in the final segment of qualifying. Whilst he’s outperformed teammate Sebastian Vettel throughout the weekend, it won’t be much consolation as he ended up almost 1.5 off the pole time of Valtteri Bottas. 

Whilst he was ''definitely happy with the job I’ve done today,’’ The 22-year-old admitted to Sky Sports F1 in his post-qualifying interview that he wasn’t surprised at where he ended up because of the problems Ferrari are facing with the tyres this weekend.  

"Surprise? No," Leclerc told Sky Sports F1 following qualifying. "I think it's a bit more realistic picture for us to be honest. We have been struggling more than last week here, especially with the softer tyres. 

"We seem to be more aggressive on them and we don't even manage to finish the full lap in Q3 with the soft tyres. They are dropping off quite a lot in the last sector. I lost quite a lot of lap time there, so not much we can do for now. It's like this.’’ 

"Tomorrow will be a very difficult race. It's hard to finish the qualifying lap, and it will be very difficult to keep up with the others in the race. But we remain optimistic. I will try my best and see where we end up.’’ 

"I think there will be drivers who will take risks and try to make only one pitstop tomorrow, while others will make two. I can't say which strategy we will choose, but we have analysed the data and we are sure about which strategy to adopt." 

Happy with my lap 🙂
Not happy with P8 ☹️
See you tomorrow. 🏎 pic.twitter.com/55115K8hhS

— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) August 8, 2020