Leclerc “can’t wait” for “brand new” Ferrari car in 2024 after latest crash

Leclerc’s qualifying session ended prematurely when he ran wide at Turn 9, clattering the barriers.

The shunt leaves him ninth on the grid for Sunday’s race, on a weekend where Ferrari has struggled for pace relative to their rivals.

On Friday, Ferrari head of aero Enrico Cardile revealed the team will introduce an entirely new car for next year - rather than an evolution of this year’s machine.

He said: “Not a lot, but it will be very different, because developing this year’s car we realised that some architectural choices we did were not right. 

“It was constraining the development too much. From there next year’s car will not be an evolution of this year’s car like this year’s car has been compared to last year’s car, but it will be a brand new car – different chassis with different design, different rear end to allow our aero [department] to better develop the car to achieve their targets.”

Reacting to Cardile’s comments, Leclerc couldn’t hide his excitement but made it clear 2023 was still the focus despite it being a “difficult situation”.

“Yeah. It’s great to hear that,” Leclerc said. “I can’t wait, first I’ve got a season to finish in ’23, but we can only go in another direction because honestly the car at the moment it is very, very difficult to be on the limit. 

“We are particularly struggling this weekend, even more so than what the balance was slow us down, because we need to be so far off the limit because as soon as we get to the limit you really don’t know what’s going to happen. 

“That’s exactly what happened in my Q3 lap, so it’s a difficult situation.”