Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc does not feel that the long period during which Ferrari has been waiting to win a new Formula 1 title and the increasing pressure to end the championship drought is in fact a reason why the Maranello team have encountered some difficulties in the first part of the 2022 Formula 1 season.
The Italian side last won the Drivers’ title with Kimi Raikkonen 15 years ago, while their last Constructors’ championship was won in 2008, when Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa were racing for Ferrari and led to team to victory on the Constructors’ championship.
The end of the 2021 Formula 1 season marked 13 campaigns since the Italian side last won any Formula 1 silverware, which represents their second longest run in Formula 1.
Ferrari did not win either championship from the 1983 Constructors’ to the 1999 season, but there was even a longer period of drought, 21 seasons between Jody Scheckter’s F1 title in 1979 and Michael Schumacher’s first championship win for the Maranello team in 2000.
Taking into consideration the strong pace and potential of the F1-75 project, which was clear from the pre-season testing sessions, the weight of expectation on Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz has been bigger to deliver another title for Ferrari. Unfortunately, a series of repeated strategic bad calls from the Maranello pitwall, reliability issues mainly related to the power unit and operational blunders such as slow pitstops or failures have led to a deficit of 80 for Charles Leclerc behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, as Ferrari are 93 points behind Red Bull ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.
“I mean, I don’t think about this,” Charles Leclerc said, when asked by media if Ferrari’s performances and actions this season have been impacted by wanting to end the championship drought – “Even though Ferrari remains Ferrari of 2000, the team is very different, and we are [in] a different place now. The last few years have been very difficult for us [Ferrari slipped to sixth in the 2020 Constructors’ Championship]. We did an incredible step from last year to this year to be fighting for wins and obviously, the goal remains to be World Champion. It still remains the same goal for me, even though that now is going to be more difficult. But it doesn’t add pressure that it has been so many years, and we haven’t won.” – he added.
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In an interview ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, where a new bad strategy call from the Maranello team turned a two-three start on the grid into a four-six final result at Hungaroring, Charles Leclerc was confident that all the right steps were in place for the Italian side to win titles again – “I think that the base now is there to win a championship, we just need to put everything together. Reliability has been a problem this year in which we’ve lost loads of points [potentially 50 for Leclerc through engine failures while leading in Spain and Azerbaijan], and we’ll try to grow from that. Hopefully, if we don’t have these [problems] for the rest of the year, things are still possible. But I still remain positive.” – the Monegasque driver concluded.
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