Leclerc finished eighth at Interlagos on Sunday, 8 November, having been demoted from seventh by a five-second time penalty for a Turn 12 collision with Liam Lawson. Lando Norris won the race from Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, with Mercedes sealing the constructors’ title behind them.

What the Monégasque saw on track bore little resemblance to the car he had qualified. Speaking to RacingNews365 after the flag, Leclerc said the first stint had been horrendous and that getting temperature into the tyres had been unmanageable.

“It’s just undrivable. Lewis definitely found a way because he had an incredible start, but for me, it was just like driving on ice.”

That nod to team-mate Lewis Hamilton was telling. The seven-time world champion had lined up 20th after an engine-related grid drop and still ran ahead of Leclerc for stretches of the race before finishing ninth, one place behind his team-mate.

Read also: Hamilton blames missing radio info from Ferrari pit wall for Interlagos spin

Rain calls that Leclerc likens to chance

The deeper frustration was strategic. The Scuderia’s reading of the shifting Interlagos sky, Leclerc told RacingNews365, felt less like informed judgement than guesswork.

“I felt like we are going into the rain and it’s like a coin flip. Maybe we end up on the right side of things, or we end up on the [wrong side].”

Ferrari had carried real wet-weather promise into the weekend. The SF-26 looked quicker on a damp track during qualifying than it had done in previous outings, according to telemetry analyses circulating around the paddock. None of that translated to the race, where the opening laps left Leclerc fighting for grip rather than positions.

The Lawson incident and a lost point

The Lawson contact at Juncao was the other sting in the afternoon. The stewards accepted the collision was minor but ruled that it disrupted the Racing Bulls car enough to let Leclerc through on the exit, and the five-second penalty swapped the pair in the final order. Lawson compared the move afterwards to a Leclerc overtake on Alex Albon from his junior formula days in Abu Dhabi.

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Ferrari leave Brazil with four points from a weekend that had, on Saturday evening, looked like a platform for more. For Leclerc, the diagnosis was simple. The car was unbearable to drive in the wet, and the team had work to do.

Next up: Las Vegas

The championship moves to the Nevada desert next. The Las Vegas Grand Prix runs on the Strip with the race starting at 8pm local time on Saturday, 21 November.

Read also: What Interlagos exposed: Ferrari future, Mercedes frustration and Red Bull’s driver dilemma