Leclerc calls for upgrades as Ferrari sees Red Bull and McLaren moving ahead

Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari has lost ground to its main rivals. In Baku, Red Bull and McLaren introduced major packages while Ferrari brought no significant upgrade to its car. Leclerc now sees Red Bull as clearly ahead of Ferrari in chassis performance and believes McLaren has also moved forward.

The Baku result partly hides that hierarchy: Leclerc qualified second, then lost places to Piastri and both Red Bulls before recovering fourth thanks to late-race incidents. In his view, Ferrari was too far behind Mercedes and Red Bull and slightly behind McLaren over the race distance.

Ferrari still has developments ‘in the pipeline’, but Leclerc admits he does not know whether they will be enough against its rivals’ progress. Lewis Hamilton also described tyres constantly moving in and out of the correct operating window. Ferrari’s issue is therefore no longer simply extracting more from its current package: Leclerc is explicitly asking for the car to keep evolving.