According to Sowetan: Charles Leclerc says Ferrari are not panicking yet despite accumulating only 17 championship points in the first two races of a season in which they were touted as title challengers.
Even though himself together with his teammate are not performing well they managed to finish fifth and sixth spot in China two weeks ago before both cars were disqualified for technical infringements.
Early on today Leclerc emphasized that things are not got going according to their plans and noted that they have learned something from their mistakes.
He said “The first two races were difficult, The pace was not where we expected it to be and to lose more points than we already did with [the disqualifications] hurt the team a lot, but I’m confident we’ve learnt from it.”
Leclerc made pointed out that there is major issue with the performance of the car and Hamilton’s victory in the sprint race in China was essentially down to the skill of the seven-time world champion.
He said “The performance will not be same compared with McLaren specifically, is just not good enough.
“So it’s not about how hard it is to extract the maximum performance out of the car, it’s just that there’s not enough performance in the car for now.
“But i take it little step by little step(as it comes) and soo I’m hoping we can close that gap, starting this weekend.”
Last season Leclerc managed to be amongst top 3 in drivers Champions after having won/ scop three races.
Leclerc pointed out that himself together with his teammate they do feel pressure of not performing but that doesn’t rule them out of the competition.
He said “There’s definitely the feeling that we haven’t maximised what we could have for these first two races.
“This is frustrating, but that doesn’t mean we cannot recover. We are aware the season is still young and with small steps we can still have an amazing season.”
According to the publication: Even if his weekend ended in disqualification, the 27-year-old showed some encouraging pace during the race in Shanghai.
That pace was evident despite Leclerc having to drive for most of the race without part of his front wing after an early clash with Hamilton — an experience he was not keen to repeat.
He urged the company to consider the possibility of changing things into their cars and believe that maybe they might have better chance of succeeding.
Leclerc said “By changing the tools and adapting the driving, it didn’t have as much of an influence as we thought, But it’s still faster to have a full front wing.”
BY LUCKY SEANEGO
