![\"Credit:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/01a3c0_fab61715c5544195ab733cd348257aef~mv2.png\")
<\/p>\nWritten by Kavi Khandelwal<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc is celebrating his 28th birthday with a mix of pragmatism about Ferrari’s current standing and a passionate reaffirmation of his long-term commitment to the team. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite winning last year’s United States Grand Prix, the Monegasque driver admits the team is on the “back foot” compared to its rivals heading into the Austin weekend.<\/p>\n
The Ferrari driver did not sound confident when asked about his chances of repeating his previous victory. He was candid about the Scuderia’s current performance deficit relative to the front-runners in Formula One.<\/p>\n
Leclerc said: “At the moment we are on the back foot compared to Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren in terms of overall performance”.<\/p>\n
However, he suggested the weekend’s format, which limits setup changes, could present a unique chance to outperform their machinery. “But on a weekend like this where there are less opportunity to change the set-up and to fine-tune, there might be the opportunity to do something special”.<\/p>\n
While his short-term expectations are measured, Leclerc’s long-term vision remains crystal clear. Despite the recent rumours swirling around a potential team change post 2027, he took the opportunity to emphatically state that his desire to win with Ferrari is unchanged.<\/p>\n
“I’ve made it very clear. My opinion is that I love the team and I’ve always loved Ferrari and I want to win again with Ferrari and that doesn’t really change,” Leclerc stated.<\/p>\n
He stressed the importance of trusting the team’s project as the foundation for success, making it clear where his priorities lie. “Whenever you are in a team, you’ve got to trust the project to be able to give your best but I love Ferrari and I’ve always been extremely grateful to them and I want to win in red. That is my main priority at the moment”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written by Kavi Khandelwal Charles Leclerc is celebrating his 28th birthday with a mix of pragmatism about Ferrari’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-206047","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\/206047","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=206047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}