As Ferrari\u2019s focus this season has often been on Lewis Hamilton\u2019s difficult transition, Christian Danner believes the team\u2019s consistent top performer – Charles Leclerc – could himself be in the midst of a career crisis.<\/p>\n
Danner, a former F1 driver turned German television pundit, told motorsport-magazin.com: “Of course, Leclerc is thinking about whether his life as a driver, his career at Ferrari, will take him where he wants to go: the championship. He\u2019s definitely questioning that. I\u2019m convinced he\u2019s also asked himself this year: my God, what am I even doing here? It\u2019s going to be nothing again.”<\/p>\n
The Monegasque has often shown visible frustration, but remains loyal to Ferrari as the Italian team again looks set to end the season second-best – with another title shot slipping away.<\/p>\n
“Leclerc is intelligent and a calm, analytical type,” Danner said. “What are the alternatives? Well, under certain circumstances, Mercedes. What Russell can do, Leclerc can do.<\/p>\n
“Red Bull is in the midst of an ultimate technical fiasco, and of course, he has to deal with Max Verstappen, at least in the short term. At McLaren, it\u2019s clear everyone would want to go there, but is he needed there? I\u2019d say no. That means the alternatives simply aren\u2019t there. Leclerc needs to focus on what he has.”<\/p>\n
After pole in Hungary, Leclerc admitted a race win in 2025 is unlikely. “I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one track at the moment where we think we are stronger than McLaren,” he said. “For now, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any tracks where I go to and think we will be the favourite, but I hope I\u2019ll be surprised.”<\/p>\n
There are now even suggestions Ferrari could be better off finishing third this season to secure more wind tunnel time for the 2026 rules reset.<\/p>\n
But Leclerc says that\u2019s not how he approaches racing. “I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s better to finish second than third,” he insisted.<\/p>\n
“However, as you said, there\u2019s also the wind tunnel time. This is not something we think of too much. When we are on track, we just want to finish as high up as possible and then we\u2019ll deal with whatever amount of hours in the wind tunnel we have.<\/p>\n
“We want to target the highest possible. Second place in the constructors\u2019 is one of our targets, but the biggest target is to come back to winning races as soon as possible. Wherever we finish, we\u2019ll work from there and see how many hours we have next year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Ferrari\u2019s focus this season has often been on Lewis Hamilton\u2019s difficult transition, Christian Danner believes the team\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-66112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}