Charles Leclerc agrees it was step forward for Ferrari when compared to 2021 but there was equal frustration how F1 2022 panned out.
From how there 2021 season was, the 2022 F1 season was certainly a big plus for Ferrari which was also natural because they put most of their focus into the new era. While Red Bull and Mercedes fought like dogs last year, Ferrari took backseat.
When the 2022 F1 season started, it looked like their work is giving results but it didn’t last for long as Red Bull quickly overcame their deficits and triumphed Ferrari by the end of the year, much to the frustration of the team and drivers Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
Leclerc alluded to the the improvement from 2021 to 2022, but admits of frustrations when they couldn’t keep at it until the end. “It’s difficult to sum it up,” he said. “I mean, obviously, if I take a step back, considering from how far we come from last year, it’s an amazing step forward.
“But obviously I cannot ignore our middle part of the season that has been super-frustrating. We went from leading the Championship with quite a bit of points to being behind by quite a bit of points. And that was a frustrating part of the of the season. So yeah, all in all, we just need to take all the mistakes that we’ve done this year and try to improve for next year.
“I think we really did some step forwards in terms of strategy and the way we have been taking decisions recently, in the last few races. Unfortunately, it was a bit more difficult to show it because the pace is not as good as the beginning of the season. But I’m confident that in terms of pace, we will manage to catch Red Bull back next year,” summed up Leclerc.
Keeping at it, Leclerc put strategy as one of the three key elements where they need to improve where reliability is another and tyre management being the third. “Honestly there are three key elements,” he started. “It’s difficult to rank them but reliability has been a problem at one point of the season, which we paid the price for later on with penalties and other things.
“Strategy, I think we’ve done too many mistakes at one point of the season and tyre management. We haven’t been consistent enough at our 100%. Like Abu Dhabi was a good race but we also sometimes have very bad races and we don’t seem to have the understanding yet of how to have a good tyre management all the time.
“So these are the three key aspects in which we are focusing on at the moment. I felt like strategy has been definitely a step forward in the last few races, as I was saying before. Difficult to show because we don’t have the pace that we had at the beginning of the year but the way we communicate, the way we take decisions is better
“Of course, there was a few mistakes, but I think we took better decisions coming race day. Tyres, strategy and obviously reliability that we cannot forget are the three things that we’ll be focusing on,” summed up Leclerc.
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