Leclerc admits Ferrari's 2026 software punishes his aggressive qualifying instincts

Charles Leclerc has made a candid admission during Singapore Grand Prix media day: the very instincts that made him one of Formula 1’s most feared qualifiers are working against him in the SF-26, with the car’s onboard software penalising his aggressive approach rather than rewarding it.

The Monégasque driver, widely regarded as one of the fastest natural qualifiers of the modern era, explained that the 2026 regulations’ mandatory 50/50 power split between the internal combustion engine and the electrical battery has fundamentally changed what fast driving looks like. When Leclerc attempts to throw the car into a corner in the way that earned him his reputation, the system fails to deliver the correct power response.

“I’ve always felt like I drive quite a lot with the feel of the moment and kind of go and challenge the car in ways that I didn’t do before in Q3 particularly,” Leclerc told media at Marina Bay. “And with these cars, you pay the price because when you are trying something that you haven’t tried before, the system behind is constantly trying to readapt on a baseline that is not known. And so it’s confusing a little bit for the system, and you lose a little bit of time here and there.”

The admission is a striking one. In previous regulations cycles, Leclerc built his standing by extracting performance beyond a car’s theoretical mechanical limits during crucial qualifying laps. The 2026 framework, with its heavy reliance on energy management logic, has effectively inverted that dynamic — the computer, not the driver, decides how much power is deployed, and it does so based on learned baselines that Leclerc’s instinctive style disrupts.

Rather than directing frustration at Ferrari’s engineers or the FIA’s technical framework, Leclerc chose to look inward. “If I look only at myself, there are a few things that I can optimise,” he said.

The self-criticism arrives at a difficult moment for the Scuderia. Ferrari sit a distant second in the constructors’ championship, more than 150 points behind a dominant Mercedes, and have managed only two grand prix victories across the first 15 rounds of the season. With Lewis Hamilton alongside him in the garage, the pressure on both drivers to unlock the SF-26’s full potential is intensifying as the campaign approaches its final stretch.