Ferrari were in something of a No Man's Land on Sunday, and that could be a problem moving forward 😬 MexicoGP F1
The team were well off the pace in Mexico City with Leclerc finishing over a minute behind race winner Max Verstappen while Carlos Sainz performed only marginally better to finish P5.
Their poor qualifying positions always meant it would be a tough ask to catch up with the Mercedes and Red Bull cars ahead of them but that task quickly proved too difficult for the once Championship leaders. Ferrari and their drivers had been warning that the Mexico circuit with its high altitude could prove damaging to their engine and that proved to be the case, the team reportedly running at a lower power to avoid failure.
With that in mind, Leclerc was asked if he could reassure the Tifosi that their performance in Mexico, their worst since France, would be a one-off but the Monégasque was unwilling to commit to that. “A tricky one,” he told Sky Sport F1. “Unfortunately, I wish I could say for sure [that it is a one off] but the thing that hurts is that I felt like we’ve maximised absolutely everything today and even though we’ve done that, we are one minute away from Max, which is a huge difference.