Charles Leclerc admits that Ferrari are far off from the targets that they had set for themselves after first half of F1 2023 season.
Ferrari came into the 2023 season with good hopes of a decent showing against Red Bull. But they got a reality check soon with their own set of issues when their rivals came out strongly from the word go. it wasn’t what the Italian manufacturer seemingly expected.
They were in direct competition with Mercedes and Aston Martin when they targeted Red Bull. With the summer break now on, Ferrari sits fourth in the standings where they are five points behind Aston Martin and 56 behind Mercedes.
They are long way off Red Bull and Leclerc admits that they are indeed far off from what they had targeted ahead of the season. Apart from some reliability troubles, lack of consistency and degradation problems has been key for their slow run.
Despite the shortcomings, the Monegasque reckons that Ferrari has done a tremendous job with the updates to improve the performances as the season progresses. “It didn’t go well,” said Leclerc regarding the first half. “Before the first race, the target was to do a step better, compared to last year, which was to win the World Championship.
“If we look at the first half of the year, we are very far from where we put our expectations before the season. So, on the other hand, as soon as we understood that, we reset it and there was an incredible reaction from the team. They brought upgrades, sometimes a month and a half earlier, and this requires a lot of effort from everybody at Maranello.
“And this, we saw that, it helped us have great results. I think we still need to try to understand – because if I do a step back in the last two races, I think we expected to be much more competitive in Budapest than on a track like here and at the end, it’s the opposite.
“So, these are things that we need to look at because maybe we haven’t optimised the package in races like Budapest and maybe we’ve done something that was surprisingly good on a track like here.
“So, it’s good, anyway, to finish on a positive note the first part of the season and now we will take the time of the summer break – or at least whenever the guys can work again – to try to analyse those two last races and hopefully maximise the package at all races for the second half of the season,” summed up Leclerc.
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