Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc remained upbeat despite the unfortunate outcome of yesterday’s Spanish Grand Prix as the Monegasque driver lost an almost certain victory by having to retire while leading the race with a gap of more than seconds, explaining he was encouraged by the F1-75’s improved pace in the race.
The Maranello team was not able to challenge Mercedes in Italy and Miami due to poor tyre degradation and Ferrari brought its first important package of updates for its F1-75 at the Circuit de Catalunia in Barcelona. Charles Leclerc confiremd that the team’s performance in the race before his engine issue proved the updates had worked as expected:
“I feel better after this weekend than I felt after the last two weekends,” Charles Leclerc said, as the Monegasque driver finished second to Max Verstappen in the previous two races of the 2022 Formula One season – “Of course, there is this issue that we had on the car, and I’m very disappointed. But on the other hand, I think there’s plenty of positive signs other than that, throughout the whole weekend. Our qualifying pace with the new package worked out as expected, which is not always a given, and everything was working well and our race pace and tyre management. Tyre management, after the last two races, we’ve been struggling quite a bit compared to Red Bull and today for us it was strong. So in those situations I think it’s good to also look at the positive and they are there today.” – he added.
Charles Leclerc was on his way to winning the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, when an engine issue struck on the 27th lap of 66:
“With the laps I had done, honestly, everything was going really, really well. I think it would have been difficult for them to catch back because obviously there was already quite a bit of a gap and we had a very good degradation also on the soft tyre, and could do quite a bit more laps compared to them. So overall, I think we had this race under control.” – he continued.
Charles Leclerc admitted the DNF at Circuit de Catalunya, that has given Max Verstappen the possibility of taking the lead in the Formula 1 Driver Standings, was indeed “a disappointment.” But at the same time, the Monegasque driver offered encouragement to the Maranello team after the difficult Spanish weekend:
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“Obviously, once you’re fighting for a championship, you know that every point is very valuable. But over the course of a season, I think it always more or less happens. Which is not an excuse, for sure. I’m pretty sure that everyone is already working so hard to understand all of it and to fix it as quickly as possible. But everyone is as disappointed as me today with what’s happened. There was just no reason for me to be angry at anybody going out the car. So I just went to see the mechanics to cheer them up a little bit because they were pretty down.” – Charles Leclerc concluded.
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