Charles Leclerc: "Surely it's a step forward" after the missed win at the Belgian Grand Prix

Credit: Formula One

Charles Leclerc came away from Spa-Francorchamps with a second-place finish and a belief that has been building since Silverstone: whatever fight was missing from this Ferrari earlier in the year might finally be showing up.

"I believed in the win until the end," he said, before adding the caveat that mattered most — Ferrari's race was helped by a well-timed Virtual Safety Car. "We had a little bit of luck, obviously, with the VSC at the right time for us, but the pace was relatively strong," he explained. Leclerc admitted to a mid-race stretch where the car turned against him, five or six laps on the hard tyre spent fighting the front axle before things settled.

"I feel better with the car," he said. "There's still some work to do, but surely it's a step forward."

That step forward is the throughline of how Leclerc is talking about his season right now. Ferrari had gone into the weekend bracing for a deficit, he said, expecting to be four or five tenths off the pace based on Thursday's simulations. Qualifying confirmed it. The race did not.

"In the race we were a bit closer than we thought," Leclerc said. "I think on two tracks which, on paper, were quite bad for us, we won and we finished second, with a little bit of luck, but still, I think it was a good effort from the team."

Asked directly whether two strong results in a row meant Ferrari had finally cracked its 2026 package, Leclerc pushed back on the idea of certainty. "I'm confident in saying that I made a step forward," he said. "Whether I'm at the level where I want to perform, not yet." He described a car that still needs to be driven around rather than with, small compromises built into every lap that cost him time in places.

"I cannot drive completely naturally, and that is slowing me down in some parts of the race," he said. Consistency, he argued, is the real obstacle with cars this sensitive — a strong weekend offers no guarantee the next one follows, because so much depends on details too small to control lap to lap. "That's maybe the frustrating bit about these cars," he said.

On track, the intensity read differently than in the press room. Leclerc spent Sunday racing hard, first with Kimi Antonelli on the opening lap and later with Oscar Piastri on lap eight, in a moment tight enough to draw a question of its own. Leclerc kept his answer short. "Lap eight was too close," he admitted. "Luckily, it didn't have any consequences for either my race or his race, so that's good."

Looking ahead to Hungary, where much of the paddock already expects Ferrari to be competitive, Leclerc declined to bank on it. He pointed back to Monaco as a reminder of how quickly form can invert — a race Ferrari was expected to dominate and instead underperformed. "We could be, but we could also not be, and we'll never know until we go there," he said.

For Leclerc, the lesson from Spa and Silverstone isn't confidence so much as method: maximise the package wherever Ferrari lands, and leave the expectations at the door. "That's the mentality we should keep for Budapest," he said, "without thinking about expectations."