“It’s not a surprise”– Charles Leclerc not entirely surprised by Ferrari’s revival

“It’s not a surprise”– Charles Leclerc is not fully surprised by Ferrari’s jump in performances, as he claims that the work happened in his presence.

This year, Ferrari managed to give a decent car to its driver’s pair, unlike last year. This year, frankly, nobody expected Ferrari to do much except for some improvements.

However, they have managed to trouble McLaren for the next best team on the grid after the competition between Red Bull and Mercedes in the last two races.

Charles Leclerc, who is presently fourth in the drivers’ standings, has claimed that this doesn’t come as a surprise to him, with all the work on Ferrari was done in his presence.

“Well, surprised, yes and no,” Leclerc said in Thursday’s drivers’ press conference in Portugal. “Because I’ve seen all of the work that has been put into last year to just come back to where we want to be, which is not yet happening.”

“We are fourth, we’ve done a good step forward compared to last year and I know how much everyone worked back at the factor to do a step forward from last year to this year.”

“So no, on that side it’s not a surprise, but it’s nice to see that all of the work paid off and we are managing to be in better shape this year but there is still a lot of work to do.”

The car feels quite nice.

Unlike last year, Leclerc managed to challenge Verstappen and Hamilton for a while, which is seen as a big win for the Maranello based team. For the Monegasque driver, the car felt nice in Imola.

When asked how easy it was to keep up with Max Verstappen and Hamilton at Imola, he replied: “Oh, it wasn’t easy, not at all! But it was fun. It was good to show that in those conditions, we seem to have made a step forward, which has been a weakness on my side.

“But also in general the feeling with the car last year and the year before wasn’t great in those conditions, and in Imola, it felt quite nice.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

Read More