Charles Leclerc believes that the Ferrari should perform a little better at the Jeddah Corniche street circuit than in Bahrain this weekend.
F1 is in Saudi Arabia this weekend for round two of the 2023 world championship and many will be hoping that it’s going to be a closer-run affair than the opening Grand Prix of the campaign, which saw Red Bull win at a canter with Max Verstappen taking victory ahead of Sergio Perez.
Indeed, the Red Bull cars looked a class apart and behind them the battle for third was between Ferrari and Aston Martin, with Charles Leclerc in possession of P3 before reliability issues – something he would have hoped had been consigned to 2022 – reared their head to force him to the side of the track and into retirement.
A DNF is not how Leclerc would have wanted to start the campaign, of course, and since then the start to his season has been made a little more difficult with him facing a 10-place grid penalty for this Sunday’s race after Ferrari confirmed that they would be changing the Control Electronics on his SF23 ahead of round two.
Rules state a team can only use two such components on the car over the course of the season and, with Ferrari now onto their third after also having to change the part before the lights went out on Bahrain, Leclerc faces a recovery drive on Sunday.
Despite that, though, the Monégasque came across relatively upbeat about his chances this weekend, saying that the high-speed street track in Saudi should be kinder to the Ferrari than the one in Bahrain:
“It should suit us a little bit better.
“Bahrain is also a very specific track, so I hope the delta pace we’ve seen [to Red Bull] will not be the same here. But our car characteristics should fit a bit better at this track, so hopefully it will be the case. Something special is definitely possible in this car.”
Many have been quick off of the back of race one to basically hand the title to Red Bull and Max Verstappen but Leclerc knows better than most a championship is not won after one or two rounds after what happened to him in 2022.
The Ferrari does clearly have potential and hopefully we’ll see some of that being realised with last year’s runner-up bidding to surge through the pack this weekend and score good points.
