Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc admitted that feels it is right for him to admit when he makes a mistake and therefore does not understand why some other drivers feels they have to try and justify their errors with alleged car issues or other external factors.
The first part of the 2022 Formula One championship has been rather difficult for Ferrari and Charles Leclerc, who after taking two race wins in the first three races of the season, now finds himself 80 points behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.
Reliability issues and a series of strategy mistakes from the Maranello team are largely responsible for the deficit to Max Verstappen, but Charles Leclerc also made two unforced errors that lost him some valuable points.
He spun in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the Imola circuit while chasing Sergio Perez for second place and lost 25 points at the Paul Ricard circuit due to a crash while running in first place.
However, Charles Leclerc has never been the type of drivers that blames his mistakes on a factor outside of his control, making him different to some of the other drivers in that regard.
And the Ferrari driver believes this is the most efficient way to approach the situation, in order to be able to improve and not find excuses.
“I really don’t see the point of hiding it. And sometimes it is so obvious to everyone that the mistake comes from the driver. I just don’t understand the drivers that try to have excuses with the wind or whatever. I mean, sometimes it can happen. One out of 200 crashes you will get something very strange happen. But I just don’t like to lose time with finding excuses because that’s exactly when you start to lose time and you just don’t go forward. This is also good for the people that are working around me because they know whenever I do a mistake, I will be very honest and I hope that will be the same for them. So then everyone can just learn quicker and it is the case in Ferrari.” – the Monegasque driver said in a recent interview for BBC.
In 2021, Scuderia Ferrari could only fight for third place behind Mercedes and Red Bull, while the Monegasque driver lost the internal duel with his Maranello team-mate Carlos Sainz in the standings. However, this season Charles Leclerc proved to be the standout Ferrari driver:
The Monegasque feels “mental training is extremely helpful” in this regard, despite the fact that there is much more to it, like natural progression, while he has also identified a different approach to how he spends his time away from the circuits, which may be “boring” but is working.
“I think there has been a linear progression since I arrived in Formula 1, just by learning year after year and trying to modify some details. This year I have changed quite a few things, especially in the way I prepare myself for races, in the way I relax after races. But this comes from experience. It’s not like last year I was not careful to all of these details. Whenever you get older – I’m still 24, so it’s fine – in a way you just feel different things. could feel at the end of last year I was very tired in the last part of the season, and I don’t want to get to the last part of this year being tired because I know it’s a big opportunity and I just want to win races. So there is a lot more off-time, and time when I’m not doing much at home and in between the races. Just training and staying at home is basically my new life. Diet, training and staying at home. So there’s a lot more boring moments, if I can call it like that, but that are very helpful and I know they are. And this makes a difference.” – Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc concluded.
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