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Charles Leclerc believes his primary challenge in 2026 has been reconciling his "aggressive" driving style with the demands of the current Formula 1 cars.
The Monegasque driver stated he made several adjustments to his approach for the British Grand Prix weekend to extract the maximum from his Ferrari SF-26. This ultimately led to his first victory of the season and his first since 2024.
Following significant regulatory changes for both power units and chassis this season, the cars offer a vastly different experience for drivers. While energy management is perhaps the most obvious challenge, with its distribution becoming a crucial part of driving this year's cars, lower downforce levels have also necessitated a new approach.
Although Leclerc has now matched his teammate Lewis Hamilton with one win each this season, he slightly trails his more experienced colleague after the first third of the 2026 season. The Monaco native emphasized that the reason for this lies in the overall car formula, rather than the SF-26 naturally suiting Hamilton better.
"I don't think the problem is with the Ferrari car itself," Leclerc said. "I think it's more related to this generation of cars. Generally, I have quite an aggressive driving style. "I think that has been a strength throughout my career. But with these cars, sometimes you have to be careful not to overdo it, because then the drop-off is quite significant. "You can start losing a lot of power from the power unit if you're not efficient, if you're not applying the throttle cleanly, if you're just not doing things consistently. "Then it gets a bit complicated because you encounter many different issues where your speed into the next corner is different, and that changes your braking point, and you constantly have to adapt your reference points, which makes everything very, very difficult. So I think there was a bit of that. "There were also a few things I simply changed at Silverstone to try and adapt to this generation of cars and to aid my driving with them. That made things quite, I mean, quite a lot better. "But as I said at Silverstone, this is something I want to prove on several tracks. I'm very happy with the race win, but it's not like with one win everything is fine and I'm relaxed. So there's a lot of work to do to try and maintain this form and, most importantly, this feeling. "If the feeling is there, as I was saying earlier, it has always been the case – when I feel good with the car, usually the lap times and performance follow."
Leclerc continued, explaining that there wasn't necessarily a single turning point where he realized his difficulties, but he did notice a key element after extensively reviewing his data following the sprint qualifying at Silverstone. While he was reluctant to disclose specifics, the Ferrari driver shared that his attempt to change this after parc fermé regulations concluded following the sprint race brought him much greater comfort.
"It's very difficult to say [where the turning point was], because it's not as easy as one moment where you realize everything you've been doing wrong. "It takes a lot of work and attempts to understand from the data what makes me feel less comfortable with these cars. But there was a moment on Friday night at Silverstone when I saw a detail. "I told myself: 'Okay, this is very difficult to quantify, but if I can change it and make it more to my liking, then my feeling will most likely be much better.' And when I did that on Saturday afternoon, when we could change the car, things were much better. So, yes, that's a good thing. "Unfortunately, I can't give many more details. So I don't know if it makes much sense to try and explain it without giving details, because then what I'm saying doesn't make much sense. "But I just want to say that everything comes down to very subtle details, and it's not as black and white as it might seem. But it was great to see that it paid off," Leclerc explained.
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