Charles Leclerc is looking to eliminate his 2020 mistakes in 2021 F1 season, especially in the opening laps like seen in Sakhir GP.
In a bid to outdo the slower F1 car and gain as much on the opening lap, Ferrari’s Leclerc pushed like anything, which resulted in some clashes – most notably with his then teammate Sebastian Vettel and also Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen.
Those mistakes added to the misery of Ferrari, but for Leclerc, it has now become a lesson ladder. Ahead of the 2021 F1 season, the Monegasque is eyeing to eliminate those mistakes, which he admits were ‘silly’ and unusually aggressive maneuvers.
“Thanks for reminding me of that beautiful moment from last year but yeah, it wasn’t great, but as you’ve said that I mentioned last year, it was definitely a difficult moment for the team and I was just extremely motivated to do something special and that motivation translated in crashes on the track – which was not great,” said Leclerc in the Bahrain GP press conference.
“But, as I’ve done in the past with my mistakes, I always try to understand why I’ve done them and try to not do them again, so I will still be as motivated to try and do great results. And we’ll have to see where we are at exactly to adapt my aggressively on track, but of course I will try not too reproduce this type of mistake.
“But let’s wait and see where we are again on the grid because I think there are positive signs from the test. And then we will see for sure from Saturday onwards. But I think I’ll probably chose my fights a little bit better. Last year, if you take Sakhir GP for example, I was fighting with a Red Bull, which wouldn’t have been possible to keep behind for the rest of the race.
“So that was a bit silly to have a crash at that point of the race for these type of positions that we wouldn’t have been able to keep anyway. But, on many other occasions it helped us to achieve better results. So I will choose my fights better, but if I have be aggressive at one point to get better results I will do it,” summed up Leclerc.
Talking more about the test and the car, Leclerc certainly feels much better with the SF21. “I think in the balance itself, in the way it behaves in the different parts of the corners – from entry to exit,” he said. “I think this is a little bit better. A bit easier to drive. And this is nice already. And then we’ve had some other positive signs. But, again, quite difficult to judge until we put everything on the limit in qualifying.”
Here’s Charles Leclerc on Ferrari atmosphere and Carlos Sainz
