earlier in the day<\/a>, Lewis Hamilton labeled that rumor as an \u201cunhelpful distraction,\u201d and Leclerc echoed that sentiment later in the afternoon.<\/p>\n\u201cThere are lots of speculations around me, but just in general around the team for whatever reason, I feel like there are too many people speaking things and not coming from actual facts, and it\u2019s just a little bit annoying,\u201d started Leclerc.<\/p>\n
\u201dIt\u2019s always been like that, and I think as a driver, but I think as a team we\u2019ve just got to focus on our things, which is what we are doing, but it\u2019s just not great and not super nice to see all these things around the team all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201dIt\u2019s definitely not a situation we want to be in, in a way that the performance is not at the level where we want to be. But we are all focused on trying to turn that situation around, as I was saying, and whenever there\u2019s those situations where the results are not there, then there are always those rumors around that come back.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what I say today is what I\u2019ve said in the past six or seven years with the team, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed on whether Ferrari and Leclerc can return to the top, given the team\u2019s recent history, the driver emphasized that the people in the building are what give him hope for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I know the people,\u201d said Leclerc when asked if a title was indeed possible at Ferrari.<\/p>\n
\u201dI mean, we are pushing massively in trying to improve our processes and in the way we work, and there are also new people coming to the team with different mindsets and also different ways of working, and that is giving me a lot of optimism for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as I said, obviously next year is going to be a very important turning point,\u201d continued Leclerc.<\/p>\n
\u201dAnd we\u2019ll see, but I\u2019m optimistic because I know the team, I know the people, and I know that we are working in the right direction, even though, as I said earlier, some of our competitors came with upgrades recently, and it might look like we are going [backward].<\/p>\n
\u201dAnd yeah, it seems that we have lost a little bit of performance compared to them, but that\u2019s kind of expected when we don\u2019t have an upgrade when the others do.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s a choice, and I hope a choice that will pay off in midterm speaking about the beginning of next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for what winning in red looks like this year, with McLaren having already clinched the Constructors\u2019 Championship, Ferrari has turned their focus on the battle for second with Mercedes.<\/p>\n
At the moment, the Silver Arrows lead in that fight by 27 points, but Leclerc is absolutely not \u201cgiving up\u201d in that chase.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I don\u2019t know how many points there are in between us, but I think they overtook us recently, so, yeah. It can swing one way or another very, very quickly, especially on the Constructors\u2019 where you\u2019ve got both cars, so we\u2019ve got to stay on it and then the target is still to finish P2 in that championship as obviously McLaren already won, so, yeah, that\u2019s a target and I think a real realistic one,\u201d said Leclerc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas — This time last year, Charles Leclerc stood in Ferrari\u2019s hospitality space ahead of the 2024…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-205241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}