Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc was interviewed by Sky Sports F1 during Thursday media day ahead of the third round of the 2023 Formula One season, the Australian Grand Prix.
Here are some of Charles most important statements on the prospects for the Melbourne race and Ferrari’s current difficult moment:
How far away does this win feel now?
Charles Leclerc: “Feels quite far away because after this win, it’s been a difficult season last year. But yeah I don’t want to focus on the past. Of course last year was really good memories, it’s good to come back to a place you have good memories but we also need to be very realistic, and we are, and we are far away from the position we were in last year coming into the race. Our package for now is probably not good enough to win for this weekend. But we are aware of that. That absolutely doesn’t mean that we are not motivated to return the situation as quickly as possible.”
Do you guys have a timeline for these upgrades?
Charles Leclerc: “We don’t have a timeline just because we are pushing so much that this timeline is consistently changing and getting closer, so that is good news. The team is pushing massively. I know there are quite a lot of upgrades coming to the car in the next few months and this should help us to close the gap.”
How do you feel about your performance this season?
Charles: [..] Overall I am happy with my own performance since the beginning of this season, and I just need to focus on that. Try to extract the maximum, keep the motivation high, but this is not too hard for me, because I am always extremely motivated. Just happy to be back in the car and hopefully have a great result this weekend.”
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“I think that in qualifying we’ve been quite good since the beginning of the season. Where we need to focus on is the race where our car is extremely ‘peaky’. When all the conditions are right, we seem to be able to extract the performance out of our package but whenever the conditions are changing a little bit with a heavier car, you see a little bit more the limitations of the car, so we are trying to focus on that I do believe we will be quite close in qualifying, I hope so, but I think the picture in the race will be quite similar [to previous Grands Prix]. We are fully motivated, we know what we need to work on; I don’t think there will be any miracles for this weekend but after that we’ve got three weeks’ break and we will try to use it in the best way possible in order to bring upgrades as quickly as possible on the car.”
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