{"id":260666,"date":"2026-01-27T21:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T21:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/260666\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T21:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T21:07:10","slug":"charles-leclerc-very-excited-for-2026-as-he-voices-hope-of-bringing-ferrari-back-to-the-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/260666\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc \u2018very excited\u2019 for 2026 as he voices hope of \u2018bringing Ferrari back to the top\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Leclerc was left feeling \u201cvery excited\u201d for the upcoming season following his opening run at the Barcelona Shakedown, with the Monegasque hoping that the opportunity posed by the new regulations can help to \u201cbring Ferrari back to the top\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the Scuderia opted not to run on the first day of the five-day event \u2013 having stated beforehand that they would begin their programme on Tuesday<\/a> \u2013 Leclerc<\/a> became the first driver to hit the track as Day 2 got underway at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.<\/p>\n

After handing over driving duties to team mate Lewis Hamilton<\/a> for the afternoon session, the eight-time race winner shared his thoughts on how the morning had gone and spoke positively about returning to the cockpit following the winter break.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nice to be back in the car \u2013 back in a very, very all-new car, and very different to what we\u2019ve been driving so far,\u201d Leclerc smiled. \u201cFor now it\u2019s all about trying to understand if everything is working properly, which it kind of did.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the best conditions because it\u2019s been a little bit raining this morning, but actually we did our programme anyway because we\u2019re not focused on performance whatsoever.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re more about looking at all the systems that are new on this car and see if everything works as it should, and it did so that\u2019s a positive, and then we\u2019ll go through slowly our programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the key takeaways from Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s first day at the Barcelona Shakedown \u2013 and what the squad will have on their checklist for the remainder of the event \u2013 Leclerc said: \u201cI think for now, obviously being the first morning, we\u2019ve gone through the very first preliminary check of the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything went properly, and little by little we\u2019ll just go through our checklist on the first systems to then eventually what matters most, which is performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this will come probably a bit later on in those three days and trying to understand first how everything behaves, and then see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in terms of the general mood in the camp, Leclerc admitted that he is keen to see how Ferrari stack up against their competitors \u2013 as well as voicing his hope that the Italian outfit can return to the top.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very excited,\u201d the 28-year-old explained. \u201cI\u2019m very excited to see what the others have in store and when we start pushing a little bit more to see where we are compared to the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year is a big opportunity for every team to do something different and to maybe gain a bigger advantage than what we\u2019ve seen in the last few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope we are the team that will manage to make the difference but, wherever we start, we will push at the maximum to try and bring Ferrari back to the top. It\u2019s been quite a few years, so I hope that this one is ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

With each team permitted to run on three days of the Barcelona Shakedown, Ferrari have two more days available to them during the remainder of the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc was left feeling \u201cvery excited\u201d for the upcoming season following his opening run at the Barcelona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-260666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}