“We are just P nowhere at the moment,” Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc muttered disconsolately into a waiting Sky Sports F1 microphone after qualifying 11th for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was 12th and, if the gap between them was more slender than it has been in recent outings, the fact remains that this was Ferrari’s most abject qualifying performance ever at Imola. Both cars were eliminated in Q2, the first time the team has failed to crack the top 10 at this venue since it first appeared on the F1 calendar in 1980 as a substitute for Monza, hosting the Italian Grand Prix.
Gilles Villeneuve may have derided the lumpen 1981 Ferrari 126CK as “a big red Cadillac” but he still put it on pole here.
Indeed, this weekend may have provided the Scuderia’s biggest ‘WTF moment’ at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari since Alain Prost slithered off at Rivazza on the formation lap of the 1991 San Marino GP and failed to make the start.
Leclerc made his frustrations with the SF-25 itself, and the team’s inability to find solutions, very clear: “There's not enough performance in the car and I keep repeating myself.
“There's just not the potential that we hope [for in] this car at the moment and we need to be better.”
