The Monegasque driver achieved his first victory at the Red Bull Ring last Sunday since the Australian Grand Prix in April, thanks to better tire management on his F1-75, which allowed him to overtake the man in the pole position, Max Verstappen.
The victory was particularly significant because it came after what Charles Leclerc has described as a “disastrous” sequence of races, in which Ferrari had wasted many opportunities to climb to the top of the podium.
Engine failures while leading in Spain and Azerbaijan cost him two victories, while strategic errors in Monaco and Great Britain deprived him of being able to end up lifting the winner’s trophy.
Aware of the growing disillusionment on Leclerc’s side of the garage at the way his world championship chances have faded over the course of the season, Maranello team principal Mattia Binotto flew to Monaco last week to meet the pilot at a private dinner and talk about what happened.
So, having tapped into the red car’s clear potential in Austria, the Monegasque made no secret of how crucial it was for him to return to the top echelon of Formula 1: “I needed it, of course, every time I get to a new career, since five years ago, I had a smile on my face and I was still optimistic.
“But with tough weekends in a row, it felt like everything was against me,” he said. “Finally, we’ve had a good race to break that, and I feel really good about winning again.”
Leclerc said the biggest surprise for him about the Ferrari’s performance at the Red Bull Ring was not its pace at the end, but how much it changed from Max Verstappen after Saturday’s sprint race victory.
“It was the first time that we were quite a bit quicker, so it’s not a surprise because we’ve worked so hard,” he said. “But the surprise came from Saturday to Sunday, because [in the sprint] Red Bull seemed to be very strong as well.
It seems that we picked up a little more pace compared to them, so it was a good surprise,” said the second-placed driver overall for the 2022 season.
Leclerc considered that Ferrari’s main problem so far this year has not been the speed of the car, but turning its potential into success: “We had a package of improvements in Barcelona and another in Silverstone, and they went well.”
“I think the performance has been good since Australia, apart from Miami maybe, when we were a little bit behind Red Bull,” said the Monegasque. “It’s been the last five races where we’ve been strong, but we couldn’t put it all together, so it’s great that now we finally have a normal weekend from my side.”
