“2022 will be a huge opportunity for everyone”– Charles Leclerc would be delighted to have Ferrari drop P3 aspirations for 2022.
Ferrari is in direct competition with McLaren for the P3 in the championship this year, and considering it is their recovery year after an abysmal season in 2020, they envisioned a P3 finish for 2021.
However, they are slipping away in the contest against McLaren, and Charles Leclerc is in the opinion of dropping this battle for a better 2022, which apparently is more demanding because of the new regulations.
“If you had the contract in front of me telling me that we sacrifice 2021 for a competitive 2022, I will be happy to take it – but nobody has this guarantee, unfortunately,” Leclerc said on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast.
“[I’m pushing the team] more to focus on 2022. And I think this is clear for everyone. 2022 will be a huge opportunity for everyone. These new cars are going to stay for many years after that.”
“This year, OK, we are still fighting with McLaren for the third place in the constructors, but at the end, we know that our goal is to fight for the first position very, very soon, and this will be from 2022 onwards, and not this year.”
“So I will be happy to give up about the third place in the constructors in 2021 to be fighting for the first place in 2022.”
Frustrating because of imbalance
Ferrari this year has progressed immensely, but for the engineering team, there’s a lot of work to do, and Leclerc explains that how the uncertainty of his car performance frustrates him.
“It is frustrating because one race it’s one way, the other race is the other way,” Leclerc said of Ferrari’s varying strengths and weaknesses. You never get the best out of both worlds. But it’s part of life, I guess. And we’ll try to find the right balance.”
