Ferrari's Jock Clear admits that the team had hoped for a better result for Charles Leclerc at the Canadian Grand Prix, after the Monegasque finished the race in fifth. Leclerc started from the back row of the grid due to the decision to take engine penalties, and attempted to work his way through the field during the event. However, he found himself stuck in traffic on more than one occasion, and spent many laps struggling to get past the Alpine of Esteban Ocon. Leclerc eventually came home in P5, while teammate Carlos Sainz took second.
P5 was "minimum" Ferrari had hoped for
Clear – who is a senior performance engineer but also works as a driver coach to Leclerc and members of the Ferrari Driver Academy – acknowledges that they had set P5 as a minimum goal for the race. When asked on the F1 Nation podcast if there was a feeling in the team that they could have done more, Clear said: "Absolutely. I think fifth was probably the minimum we wanted before the race. "Yeah, 19th on the grid, you think that's a long way to go. But, with the pace of the car we have, fifth was the minimum we wanted, and actually, we hoped for better to be honest, and not unrealistically."
Canadian GP proved "frustrating" for Leclerc
Despite this, Clear has reiterated that this was not the fault of Leclerc, who he says faced a challenging race given the issues with traffic. "The fact is that the race was hugely frustrating for Charles, because he just got stuck behind Ocon, and actually the Safety Car arrived at the wrong time for him," he added. "The ball didn't spin for him today, and it was frustrating. He didn't do anything wrong, and Ocon drove a very good race to keep him behind him. "But it was just the frustration of spending 15 laps behind, looking at Ocon's rear wing." In terms of whether they had expected the overtakes to be easier, Clear commented: "On paper, with no wind, it would have been easier. "We arrived and this was as the forecast told us it was going to be. It was a tailwind out of the hairpin, which is a tailwind all the way down to that last chicane. "The drivers were saying [before the race], that's the worst thing you can have for overtaking, because of course, it reduces the effect of the DRS [Drag Reduction System], it reduces the drag on the car in front, and doesn't really have much effect on the car behind. "So Charles was saying [before the race that] it's going to be a lot more difficult to overtake, and that's what it proved to be."
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