One year on from his win in Melbourne in 2022, Charles Leclerc isn’t expecting a repeat performance from Ferrari this weekend.
Twelve months ago, Leclerc and the Scuderia scored their second win in three races after a dominant performance at Albert Park.
But this year, while Red Bull has hit the ground running with 1-2 finishes in Bahrain and in Jeddah, the Italian outfit is nowhere near its arch-rival in terms of its performance level.
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Ferrari is working hard to bridge the gap with Red Bull, but in Melbourne the team would need a miracle to win, and Leclerc thinks the chances of a divine intervention are scarce.
©Ferrari
“Yeah, good memories, but looking [at] this year we are not coming into this race in the same situation as we were last year,” he admitted.
“I think clearly our performance is not as good as last year but we are working massively to try and come back to the front.
“We are fully motivated to be back at the front, we know what we need to work on.
“I don’t think there will be any miracles for this weekend but after that we’ve got three weeks’ break and we will try to use it in the best way possible in order to bring upgrades as quickly as possible on the car.”
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Ferrari’s race pace – not its speed in qualifying – was the weak point of its SF-23 in the first two rounds.
Leclerc subsequently believes that this weekend’s Saturday afternoon session will be another close fought affair. But the five-time Grand Prix winner has no illusions about his chances of racing at the front on Sunday.
“I think that in qualifying we’ve been quite good since the beginning of the season,” he added. “Where we need to focus on is the race where our car is extremely ‘peaky’.
“When all the conditions are right, we seem to be able to extract the performance out of our package but whenever the conditions are changing a little bit with a heavier car, when you see a little bit more the limitations of the car, that’s where you struggle, so we are trying to focus on that.
“I do believe we will be quite close in qualifying, I hope so, but I think the picture in the race will be quite similar [to previous Grands Prix],” he concluded.
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