As Formula 1 heads to Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc arrives with two podiums from the opening two rounds — a strong start on paper, yet one that still leaves Ferrari chasing the benchmark set by Mercedes.
Speaking ahead of the weekend, Leclerc offered a clear-eyed assessment of where Ferrari stands and what it will take to close the gap.
The Monegasque driver acknowledged that Ferrari’s early-season form is encouraging but far from satisfying for a team with championship ambitions.
“Well, I think, as everyone is saying, this championship is going to be all about development and the upgrades that each team is going to bring. For now, we are in an okay-ish place, but of course we’re not here to only do podiums and we want to win races, which at the moment seems very difficult because Mercedes is at a very high level.”
Ferrari has upgrades in the pipeline, but Leclerc stressed that the development race will be relentless: “We are working very hard and especially the people back at the factory are working extremely hard to bring upgrades as soon as possible.
“I know there are quite a few things coming up soon. Whether this is going to make the difference or not, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure the others are not on vacation either, so it’s going to be tough.”
The true gap to Mercedes
While the racing has appeared close on track, Leclerc believes the underlying pace difference remains significant.
“I don’t think it’s as close as maybe people think. Obviously the first few races we see lots of fighting between the cars, which is actually quite nice, but as soon as you are a little bit suboptimal with these cars you lose a lot of lap time.”
Ferrari’s best chance to challenge Mercedes, he says, comes in the opening laps before clean air allows the Silver Arrows to stretch their legs.
“Our only chance to stay with them is to annoy them in the first few laps, but as soon as they get free air then they’ve shown their real pace in the last race, and I think there’s still these four or five tenths that we’ve seen throughout these first two races. So, it’s still a significant advantage.”
Despite that, Leclerc remains optimistic — but realistic: “That doesn’t discourage me and again we have some things in the pipeline. We’ve got to focus on ourselves, not trying to overdo it because it’s never good in these situations, and then we’ll see where that brings us.”
Will Suzuka’s Qualifying Tweaks Help Ferrari?
With the FIA reducing the maximum permitted energy recharge for qualifying this weekend, some teams hope the change could shake up the competitive order. Leclerc, however, downplayed its impact.
“I don’t think it will be a game changer. I think it will be pretty similar, apart from for the driver where maybe there’s a little bit less lift and coast, which is I think a good thing.”
He believes qualifying still needs further refinement under the new regulations. “I think for qualifying there are still some changes that need to be done to make sure that we can push at the maximum, whatever the limit of the car is.
“But at the moment, so far for the first two races, it was more about managing everything properly in qualifying rather than the actual flat-out push that we were used to in Q3 in the past years.”
And as for this weekend’s tweak, Leclerc said: “There’s still some fine-tuning to be done on that, but I don’t think that this particular change will be a game changer for this weekend.”
