[Saba Sports News] At the sprint race of the Miami Grand Prix, Ferrari’s SF-26 car showed solid competitiveness. However, its pace dropped sharply out of nowhere in the main race. After the race, Charles Leclerc openly called on the team to launch an internal investigation to figure out exactly what went wrong with the car.
Throughout the grand prix, Ferrari suffered a noticeable drop in pace on both medium and hard compound tyres. Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Lando Norris gradually pulled away, leaving Leclerc locked in a fierce battle to defend third place and a podium finish. On the penultimate lap, Oscar Piastri overtook him at Turn 17 to take third position. To make matters worse, Leclerc then made a mistake at Turn 3, sending his car sliding into the barriers. He completed the final lap struggling with the car. After the race, Leclerc did not hide his confusion, pointing out that the car suffered severe tyre degradation on medium tyres and also lacked the pace it had shown in the sprint race when running on hard tyres.
After four rounds of the season, Leclerc sits third in the Drivers’ Championship, but is already 41 points behind leader Antonelli. Meanwhile, Ferrari trails Mercedes by 70 points in the Constructors’ Championship. For Ferrari, who were viewed as genuine title contenders at the start of the season, the Miami Grand Prix may have sounded a clear alarm bell.
In my opinion, the sudden slump in Ferrari’s performance is linked to setup errors. Race-day weather forecasts indicated a risk of rain. As atmospheric humidity dropped, it severely affected the overall performance of the Ferrari car, while the team’s race engineers failed to make adequate preparations for such conditions.