Charles Leclerc skeptical of Mercedes and Red Bull “hiding their game,” ahead of 2022 F1 season
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Charles Leclerc
Charles Leclerc the Ferrari Formula1 driver has recently commented on the performances that the Red Bull and Mercedes team have been putting in the pre-season testing so far and believes it is not representative of their respective car’s true potential.
It has been stated in Planetf1 that Ferrari was once again seen on top of the timing sheets as during day 2 of Bahrain testing Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz put the official fastest time of the session with a 1:33:532.
The 2021 world champion Max Verstappen was 0.497 adrift of that time P2, while Lewis Hamilton was over a tenth further back of Mercedes.
Going on the performances of Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton has said, “If Bahrain Grand Prix was tomorrow, March 12, rather than the next weekend, then Ferrari would be looking good for a one-two.“
Charles Leclerc on the other hand has stressed that one should not look too much into the timings just yet as he believes neither Mercedes nor RedBull have pushed for ultimate performance yet.
Leclerc while talking to the media about the F1-75 has said “Consistency is there, I think the consistency is good, balance is good, which are two positive things.”
“But this means absolutely nothing on the performance and yes, we are seeing not bad lap times for now, but lap times that don’t mean anything.“
Charles Leclerc believes Mercedes and Red Bull have got a few tricks up their sleeves
“I’m sure that Mercedes and Red Bull have so much more to come and are just hiding their game a lot for now.”
“So, it doesn’t mean much, the timing page, but on the other hand we are focusing on ourselves and for now it is a good test, we haven’t had any particular issues.”
Charles Leclerc has also given an insight into its team’s solution to the porpoising issue and has indicated that the team is now facing less porpoising as compared to the first pre-season testing.
“I think the porpoising is not gone but much better compared to the first days in Barcelona.”
“This was one of our priorities after the Barcelona testing, so it looks good, we are working well and any time we find ourselves in a difficult place we manage to work and get out of it.”
“So it’s positive for now.”
It was, however, not the case for Mercedes who got in the eyes of everyone with their radical slim sidepod design, while RedBull is preparing a big upgrade for the final testing day.
So as far as Charles Leclerc is concerned he is almost sure that the two top dogs of the sport still have a lot in store and for Ferrari, it is going to be about focusing on their performance.
“We didn’t have a particularly different car compared to Barcelona.”
“We surely understand the car better compared to the first days in Barcelona, but it’s not like we arrived with a massive gain of performance.”
“But it’s a different approach, we’ve seen Red Bull will have another upgrade coming before the race, we’ve seen Mercedes that arrived with a completely different car here, so we cannot relax, they haven’t pushed at all.”
“And on our side we are just trying to get to know this car as much as we can, to be as ready as possible for the first race.”
The 18th of March is approaching very fast and given that today is the last day of testing, it is going to be absolutely crucial for Ferrari and Charles Leclerc that they are able to get rid of any niggles or tweaks that the car still might need, because, after today, teams are not going to get a lot of time to fix things that need fixing.
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Rishabh Negi
(3244 Articles Published)