Charles Leclerc remains optimistic - at least in public - that he can bounce back in the title fight, even after two breaks in his UP in three races.
Charles Leclerc remains optimistic - at least in public - that he can bounce back in the title fight, even after two breaks of his UP in three races.
"I'm more than frustrated," he said. "That keeps escalating. We need to overcome those things and hopefully be strong in Canada."
"It's not easy, but I've been through more difficult times in my career. Mentally, I'll be there. I'm still as motivated as I was five races ago, when I was leading with a pretty big margin. The championship is long and I still believe as much as I did in the last few races, but we need to overcome these things."
But the Monegasque's title challenge with Ferrari this year may be becoming more and more of an illusion after a great start to the season.
His abandonment of the lead at the Azerbaijan GP in a cloud of engine smoke was not only the second time in three races that the same thing has happened. It was also the latest in a series of disappointments that had an 80-point turnaround against him in just five races.
In the first three races this season, Leclerc had claimed two wins and a P2, and led his opponent Max Verstappen by 46 points.
Five races later, Leclerc is 34 points behind the Red Bull driver - a remarkable 80-point turnaround, with an average of 16 points lost per race - despite having taken pole in the last four consecutive GPs.
In the meantime, in addition to the two engine breaks, Leclerc saw his team lose the win in his home race in Monaco with a bad strategy, while his own spin at the end of the GP in Imola turned a P3 into P6.
Two races ago in Spain, Leclerc seemed on his way to a sure victory. Monaco was another victory that slipped away. The abandonment in Baku was a big blow to Leclerc's title hopes, but a potentially even bigger concern for Ferrari and Leclerc is the troubled situation of UP Ferrari in the future.
Leclerc will now surely face grid penalties for using more UP components than allowed this season.
The first of these could be precisely in Canada next weekend, since Leclerc has already reached his maximum allocation of three turbos this year.
A brand new UP - the second of the year - was installed in his car in Miami for the fifth race of the season.
And after his abandonment in Spain, caused by a broken turbo and MGU-H, Ferrari fitted a third turbo at the start of the Baku weekend. When Ferrari uses a fourth turbo in its car, this will lead to an automatic 10 grid position penalty.
Of the other components that make up a UP, Leclerc still has a leeway of one before a punishment - this time five positions - is applied. Mattia Binotto admitted on Sunday that Leclerc would need a new engine for Montreal, although he did not confirm that this would mean a grid punishment there.
Whatever happens in Canada, it means that Leclerc will inevitably be punished in UP-related grid positions further down the line, as there is still two-thirds of the season to go.
Binotto confessed, "It's a concern - and even more of a concern because I don't have the answer I would like now about what the problem was."
"We will need to install another new engine, that's a fact. It's very early in the season. Sometimes problems don't have short-term solutions, so I don't know what strategy we will need to adopt. Less mileage or a different type of usage, or a short solution because what happened is a short solution?
"It's something we'll understand in the next few days and hopefully we'll have a clearer answer when we're in Canada.
The case is that if there is no short-term fix, Binotto's talk confirms that Ferrari will have to change the way it uses its UP. It will either have to do less mileage - meaning using more engines, which would mean more punishments - or taking away power, which would mean reducing its competitiveness.