F1 | Ferrari, Leclerc: “We need to understand why we managed to compete so well last Sunday”

from Spielberg, Austria

Charles Leclerc wants to keep his feet on the ground ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix. Last Sunday's excellent performance must not lull the Ferrari environment, first we need to understand why the SF21 was able to perform so well after the bitter disappointment at Paul Ricard, after which it will be the task of the men from Maranello to replicate or at least come close to that type of performance. The Monegasque, in the usual Thursday press conference, also spoke a lot about 2022.

“Yes, we tested a version of next year's car in the simulator, but it's still very, very early – Leclerc admitted. It looks very different to what we are used to driving, so I think it will be a question mark for everyone. It's a project that was born from scratch, no one knows where we are compared to the others, but we are working on it. More than anything at the moment it's just numbers and predictions, but we can definitely give our feedback, especially to the simulator: we're lucky to have such a sophisticated one, we can try different things, and the driver's input is very important there. As for the rest, I repeat, it is very early: the only thing that Carlos and I can do is try to work in the best possible way to explain what the weak points of this year's car are, try to understand why we have them and do so that they do not recur in the 2022 one, even if the project is totally different".

Looking back to 2021, Charles said: “There was a lot of work between Paul Ricard and Austria! Of course, we wouldn't have expected such a race pace, but it's the result of the team's work. On the other hand we didn't imagine so many problems in France, it was a very negative surprise, but we need to understand exactly how we managed to make our package work so well last Sunday. There were some things done that we think favored that type of performance, but we're not clear on the whole picture, so before we try to replicate this type of performance consistently throughout the year we'll need to understand why we were able to compete the way we did. last Sunday".