Ferrari‘s Monaco pole bid” src=”https://storage.ghost.io/c/dd/af/ddafbd99-2ccd-468c-b622-4b3cccf80b49/content/images/2026/06/XPB_1414411_HiRes.jpg” />
Neither Ferrari Formula 1 driver felt comfortable in the crucial moments of Monaco Grand Prix qualifying as the team’s strong start to the weekend failed to translate into pole.
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will start third and fourth in a disappointing final result for Ferrari, which had dominated Friday practice and looked like the biggest threat to Mercedes‘ world championship leader Kimi Antonelli into qualifying.
However, Hamilton was left bemoaning a lack of confidence in the car at the start of the qualifying that threw his rhythm through the session, while Leclerc has battled braking issues all weekend.
Leclerc aborted his first run in Q3 after running wide at Massenet, briefly went quickest with his second, and his last run was a better lap until he tagged the wall with the rear at Tabac after a bit of oversteer mid-corner.
Asked by The Race about that final run, Leclerc described it as “very much on the edge” and came undone with “maybe dirty air” despite there being no direct traffic ahead, which left the car moving around already on corner entry.
His bigger problem this weekend, though, has been repeated discomfort on the brakes – which has led to significant complaints over the radio in every session.
“Well, the thing is that I’m definitely not knowing what I’m having,” said Leclerc when asked by The Race to explain the braking inconsistency and what response he was feeling.
“It’s a bit of a discovery whenever I get on the brakes and I don’t want to go too much into the detail, and I won’t go into more detail than what I’ve said, but it’s been extremely inconsistent, and I’ve just been struggling massively.
“Whether it was in Montreal or here, especially when tyres are just not in the right window and the tyre is also digital on top of that, the inconsistency from the car made it very difficult.”
The digital tyre reference means that Leclerc feels the tyre grip is either there, or not. It is behaving in a binary manner rather than progressively gaining or losing grip, making it difficult to judge the tyre’s behaviour.
Leclerc, who said he has been “struggling recently” with this problem when asked if it was there all season, also confirmed that “corner to corner it is not really behaving the same way”.
“It’s just extremely tricky,” he said.
“We are speaking about details, but I think the fact of being in or out the window of the tyre all the time, these fine details makes a huge difference.
“I’ve just been struggling with it.”
As for Hamilton, he said “I really, really don’t know” what made his car balance shift so much from Friday to Saturday.
Hamilton felt the car had too much front end at the start of qualifying so he had to reduce the wing angle significantly to settle the rear down.
He said this made the Ferrari “a little bit more reasonable” by his final run in Q3, but he needed to start qualifying with that feeling to build through the session “because it’s all about confidence” in Monaco.
“It was completely gone in Q1 and then I was trying to pull back what I could,” said Hamilton.
“So I think I’m relatively happy with P3. Obviously P1 is what I really wanted and I really felt like the team deserved to finally get it. And I felt capable.
“I’m in a really good place with the car. I’m in really good place with the team. And you can see that I have decent pace still in me.
“There’s no lacking pace, which I’m really grateful and happy about, regardless of all the negative comments people have made.
“So it’s good I just keep on putting the work in, and I’ll keep showing up, and I’ll keep delivering.”
