Ferrari and McLaren are only 3.5 points apart ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix and Charles Leclerc seemed quietly optimistic about Scuderia’s chances as they aim to level the gap and finish third in the constructors’ championship to prove.
Leclerc, who clinched pole here in the last F1 race in 2019, finished fourth in the 2021 United States Grand Prix two weeks ago and is aiming for a third point in a row in Mexico. With Ferrari a mustache behind McLaren on the hunt for P3 in the table, he weighed his team’s chances at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on Thursday.
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“It should be a better track for us on paper than Austin,” he said, “but it’s also true that sometimes we’ve had good and bad surprises compared to what we’d expect on paper, so we don’t give up get carried away. ”Keep concentrating on our work. But it should be a pretty strong race for us when we compare ourselves to the other midfield teams. “
On the battle against McLaren, he added, “We’re still hunting them; We’re not ahead of them, so it’s going to be very, very close because they’re a very strong team that has been very consistent since the beginning of the year, so it won’t be easy.
“But as I said, we’ve been working well together as a team since the start of the season – every time we’ve brought something with us [upgrades] It was going in the right direction – so it looks good, but we have to try to do everything perfectly by the end of the season and I am confident that in the championship we have a chance of finishing ahead of them. “
Not only Leclerc has a hot run, but also his team-mate Carlos Sainz. The Spaniard has scored points in every race this season except Portugal and France, which means Ferrari has scored in all but one race this season: the French GP.
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“Yes, we’ve had a couple of good races now,” said Leclerc, paying tribute to Ferrari’s drive. “Austin in particular was a pretty strong race for us, that’s good to see. It’s not a track that we expected to be strong, or at least not stronger, than McLaren, our main rivals this year, and we were. So it shows that we are working in the right direction, and if we keep working on it, the future looks bright. But yes, we have to keep our heads down and keep working.
“Our package with high downforce has always worked very well this season – in Monaco, also in Budapest – so yes, we will probably use it here. So I think we should be competitive [in Mexico],” he concluded.
