“You’re never confident to just brake,” Charles Leclerc not bothered by Ferrari’s porpoising issues

“You’re never confident to just brake,” Charles Leclerc not bothered by Ferrari’s porpoising issues

Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc claimed his second victory of the season in the 2022 Australia GP. The Ferrari driver extended his lead in the Drivers Championship in first place with 71 points. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez finished second. Meanwhile, George Russell claimed his first podium finish as a Mercedes driver as the Briton finished 3rd in the race.

Leclerc started the race on pole position and since then went unrivalled for the rest of the race. He achieved his first F1 grand slam in his career and the first for Ferrari in 12 years. Fernando Alonso was the last Ferrari driver to do it in Singapore in 2010.

The Monagesque showed a dominant performance throughout the race despite battling porpoising. Leclerc said he does feel the discomfort facing the bumps for 58 laps, but says “not very sensitive to it.”

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Charles Leclerc wins 2022 Australian GP from Pole position

Charles Leclerc wins 2022 Australian GP
Charles Leclerc wins 2022 Australian GP

The Albert Park circuit’s fresh yet bumpy asphalt made the bouncing much more prominent. Teams lost valuable time and could have also been an indirect cause of the number of incidents over the weekend. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc however was not bothered by the porpoising. Leclerc revealed that only turn 9 at Melbourne proved “tricky” as the car was “bouncing a lot”.

Leclerc said, “I don’t know why, but I am not very sensitive to it. It looks extremely bad on the on-boards, and of course, I feel it. But it doesn’t disturb me too much in terms of performance. It’s definitely something we want to tackle because it doesn’t help us for consistency, especially sometimes once you have bounced in a corner, it can be a problem. So, we need to work on that.”

He added, “But I couldn’t have gone faster [in Melbourne] if I didn’t have the bouncing. For the restart [when battling Max Verstappen after a safety car period], it was a bit tricky, because I had it before turn one. So, you’re never as confident to just brake extremely hard to turn one. But everything went well. It was just not so comfortable to do 58 laps like this.”

Ferrari is on course to cement their lead on the championship as Leclerc claims their and his second win of the 2022 season. And the Scuderia, comfortably sit on top of the Constructor’s championship with a 49 point lead on Mercedes in second place. Leclerc leads the drivers’ championship by 34 points which is more than anyone did during any point in the 2021 season.

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