Charles Leclerc talks about having full confidence on Ferrari in 2022 as Laurent Mekies praises the work done by the Monegasque.
After a terrific start to the 2022 campaign, Ferrari have to a certain degree lost their way slightly. Red Bull have caught up and overtaken the Maranello concern quite handsomely in both championships. Yes, they have had some mechanical gremlins, both drivers have suffered but the decision-making process has been questionable on occasions by both drivers and the fans in the stands alike.
An operational issue at the top perhaps, it has gone pear-shaped on more than one occasion over the last few races and more. But is it an issue at all or is it possibly just possibly pure coincidence that Ferrari are struggling somewhat at the top and Red Bull are getting it right first time all the time.
“I have full confidence in the team,” said Leclerc. “And I think we’ve shown after ‘20 and 2021 that we have the team to come back at the top then. Of course we’ve done a few mistakes in the last races, in Silverstone in Monaco, but this happens to every team and now we are a bit more in the spotlight because we are fighting for wins”.
“And we always try and work on ourselves to get better. And we, for sure, need to get better. But yeah, I don’t think there’s a particular weakness there,” summed up Leclerc. He himself has made some errors along the way this year but despite that, it has been a great campaign for the Monegasque.
Speed wise he has really been on the case from day one, alleviate the speed and errors can reduce but the gap to Red Bull can increase. Assistant team principal Mekies gives Leclerc a vote of confidence in retrospect. “Let’s start from the speed,” he said. “He has been showing such outstanding speed this year again that you don’t want to go and touched that aspect and Charles doesn’t need us to understand, as a great racing driver, to understand where he needs to go in terms of closeness to the limit”.
“He is a master of that and, as we all do, mistakes can happen. I think we don’t look at single mistakes, we look at the strike rate. We look at how extraordinarily you’re able to do things compared to stuff that you do not as good, and I think his strike rate this year has been very, very impressive and we don’t want him to change anything,” summed up Mekies.
Summer break and Ferrari have had some great days and some rather bad ones too. Both young, still both a touch emotional perhaps with Leclerc who has had more to lose because of how his season is panning out after his wonder start to the campaign being the more emotional of the pairing.
“I would not say so, really,” said Mekies. “With both these guys we have had very good highs and we have had very painful lows this season, and in both ways, in both directions, when they come back to the garage, when they have looked at what happened, when they have looked at the data, they are able to reset, to be in the learning mode pretty much after 15 minutes”.
“So you need to separate that from maybe what you can hear on the radio in the heat of the moment when they are racing with a high heart rate. I think it’s two different things. But when they get out of the car and they analyse everything, after an hour they will be back into the analysis mode and showing little emotion in a negative way, no negative emotions, but instead you can see it drives them to even more motivation,” summed Mekies.
Here’s Laurent Mekies on what has changed for Carlos Sainz
Here’s Mattia Binotto on nothing to change on Ferrari side
Here’s Carlos Sainz on Ferrari not having pace in Hungary