Charles Leclerc doesn’t think Ferrari on pure pace can challenge McLaren in F1 constructors’ fight, as Carlos Sainz adds on about Red Bull too.
When the 2024 F1 season started and a handful of races were done with, no one would have predicted McLaren to be leading the standings after 18 rounds and Ferrari to be in contention of winning the constructors’ championship, with six races to go.
As of now, McLaren has 516 points and are looking strong to win the 2024 F1 constructors’ title. Red Bull sits second with 475 and Ferrari is third with 441. It should be a tight battle still as the recent races have shown to be, but Leclerc and Sainz are not thinking about title win, for now.
While they agree that Ferrari has been good, but they also concede that McLaren are a step ahead. On pure pace, it will be difficult to fight them, but if things happen in a grand prix and if their rivals make mistakes, there is an outside chance. Leclerc is also not certain how Red Bull will be in this fight.
He expects them to be a strong entity too. “As much as the last two races were good, I think we’ve always been saying we need to be careful to not have wrong expectations, because McLaren still have a better car than us by quite a bit,” said Leclerc to media. “We have some tracks where we’ll be very close, some others where we’ll be further away.
“I don’t see ourselves in the fight but if they do mistakes then we might end up in a fight like we are now. Before Singapore, we’re quite close, and we never really had the fastest car, apart from Monaco, maybe, and Monza where we were quite strong as well, but even Monza, you could argue… anyway.
“I think if we keep being consistent and not having too many missed opportunities, we will do the count at the end, and hopefully it will be enough to get the constructors’. But on pure pace, I don’t think we are yet at the level to fight for the constructors’.
“Everything depends on their next races, Red Bull have been bit up and down in the last few races, but it is also true that the last few races has been bit more specific in terms of track and car characteristics. I have never ruled them out and I am sure they will be strong until the end of the season,” summed up Leclerc.
Teammate Sainz had similar views on McLaren and Red Bull, but what he is pleased about is the fight shown by Ferrari. “McLaren definitely has the upper hand that they are the favorites for winning it,” he said. “We still have Red Bull in our sights, and obviously McLaren, if they start going south or they start having problems, so we need to keep ourselves in it.
“Second place would show good resilience by the team after a tough part of the year where we gave up a lot of points and a lot of development curve there. But Red Bull is going to come back strong with upgrades at the end of the season once they’ve understood what they did wrong with their car, so it’s not going to be easy to beat them either.”
Here’s Ferrari trio on Singapore GP
Here’s Carlos Sainz on taking evasive action
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact