Simulator did not indicate severe bouncing, claims Leclerc

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc expects Ferrari to find big gains as soon as the team solves the bouncing issue that has hindered the SF-24's issues since the Spanish Grand Prix.

Having struggled with bouncing in recent rounds since the introduction of the Barcelona upgrade package, Ferrari have brought a modified floor to the Hungaroring. The small tweak looked to provide a step forward as the bouncing was mitigated on the slow, narrow and twisty Hungaroring.

The six-time F1 race winner is confident that Ferrari will once again be in the fight for F1 grand prix wins, once it solves the persistent bouncing that is plaguing the car.

“I think the race in Budapest confirmed that we are back on the right road. We know there’s still a lot of work to do but we have a clear idea what is needed.

"As soon as we get some updates I believe we will be able to fight for the win, but for the moment we have to focus on ourselves and maximise the potential of the package we have now.”

The Monegasque explained how the steps taken in the past couple of races were necessary all the same with the Scuderia having sacrificed the British Grand Prix to carry out several comparison runs across the weekend.

“When we introduced the new parts in Spain we found ourselves having to deal with side effects that we weren’t expecting. So we had to experiment quite a bit to understand everything about how the car was handling and I think that was clear in Silverstone.

“We sacrificed that race but at least we found the direction to head in," he continued.

In the wind tunnel and the simulator, various problems do not manifest themselves and they only show up on track and that’s why other teams are also struggling with updates.

Leclerc also spoke about how nice the current generation of cars were to drive, but that they were also tricky. “They are very extreme,” he said. “And that makes them very difficult to develop.