Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc believes there are “positive signs” that the Maranello team can improve on their performance on Sunday in the next Formula 1 championship, as Ferrari will be looking to challenge Red Bull for the titles after the unsuccessful attempt this year.
Charles Leclerc started the current F1 season very strong, by winning the first round in Bahrain, a result which was followed by a second place finish in Saudi Arabia and another race win, at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne. This gave hope that the Maranello team would be able to fight Red Bull and Max Verstappen for both championships until the end of the season.
Sadly the Italian side experienced many issues with power unit reliability and strategic decisions from the pit wall at several race weekends, which gradually allowed Red Bull to take the lead and build a solid gap in front as the season progressed.
With three races until the end of the championship, Charles Leclerc’s last target in 2022 is win the battle with Sergio Perez for second place in the Drivers’ standings, but is aware that the most important thing would be for Ferrari to continue to improve their execution on Sundays ahead of 2023.
“I think honestly, it’s mostly Sunday execution as a whole [that we need to improve]. So this is loads of things; it’s tyre management – as we’ve seen in the last race, it’s still a weak point – communication, strategy, reliability… Just to be a stronger team on Sunday, and to actually finalise the weekend in the best way possible, because [on] the Saturday we’ve been often very strong, but [on] Sunday sometimes things fell apart.” – the Monegasque driver said.
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As the focus is now already on the next F1 campaign, Charles Leclerc feels there are signs of improvement from the Maranello team in fixing this problem, confirming he is confident that Ferrari will be able to come back stronger in 2023, having learned their lessons this season:
“I think for communication, strategy, etc, [there have] been a few races now that we’ve been working on it and I’ve already seen positive signs, so that is good,” the 25-year-old explained – “And then [with] the tyre management, as we’ve seen in the last races where this is a bit more difficult, we need to identify all the causes of it. But this is a continuous work that we are doing and that we are getting better at.” – Charles Leclerc continued.
Regarding the tyre management, one of Ferrari’s major weaknesses especially in this second part of the 2022 Formula 1 championship, the Monegasque driver feels the Italian side are still behind Red Bull in managing certain situations which have allowed the RB18 to be superior in terms of race pace due to tyre wear:
“I think we’ve seen it this year in some races, we’ve been very good with tyre management. The only thing we need to be [is] to be good in very specific situations. Like in Japan, the Sunday was a bit cooler, [and] obviously, it was raining also. And then when it’s a bit of an unexpected situation, that’s where we probably are not as good as maybe Red Bull is, so on that we need to work.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded.
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