While Charles Leclerc is more or less a spectator to the championship battle that’s raging on between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, he is capable of disrupting their momentum if Ferrari can optimise their package this weekend. Moreover, the Maranello-based outfit still has its sights set on the constructors’ championship as they seek to claw back some points from the new frontrunners McLaren and Red Bull, who currently occupy the second place.
In his media session ahead of the United States Grand Prix, Leclerc was asked whether he could play the role of the referee in the championship fight between Verstappen and Norris by stealing points from them and potentially winning races. Assigning the duty of the arbitrator to the FIA, the Monégasque driver responded that he is not too preoccupied with the battle in front, despite having a target of taking maximum points off his rivals.
Nonetheless, Leclerc emphasised the likelihood—albeit small—of Ferrari still posing a threat to McLaren and Red Bull if they manage to capitalise on every race weekend going forward. He also added that he seeks to primarily focus on his own performance and clinch multiple victories if the opportunities present themselves.
“I mean, I wouldn’t consider that a referee. Probably the FIA is much more of a referee than I am.
“But, I mean, the goal is obviously to steal as many points as we can from them. But more than focusing on the battle in front, I still feel that if we do everything perfect, there’s still a slight possibility of us joining the fight.
“And, that’s the only thing I have in mind more than their fights. I see it more than our fights and just focusing on my own performance and trying to win as many races as possible whenever there’s the opportunity to do so is, is my focus.”
Referring to the unique nature of the past three circuits, Leclerc was asked to comment on whether he expects Ferrari to be competitive this weekend. Stating that Ferrari and Mercedes are not the favourites heading into the race weekend, the seven-time race winner admitted that he anticipates McLaren and Red Bull to still have the edge on them.
Although Ferrari, unlike the other top teams, hasn’t brought a major upgrade package to Austin, Leclerc confirmed that they intend to evaluate if their previous upgrades function as they anticipated on a well-rounded track such as the Circuit of the Americas. At the same time, he added that they cannot draw any conclusions yet in terms of whether they have taken a step forward in performance.
“I don’t know. For me, I still expect McLaren to be in front, Red Bull to be very similar to them.
“And then us and Mercedes, depending on how good of a weekend we have. We’ll be there, but we are not the favourite going into this weekend. So, then to see how far we’ll be, it’s difficult to predict.
“We’ve had a few upgrades in the last few races. So, I think this is definitely the track where we will put all of those upgrades at test because until now, Singapore, Baku, Monza, those are very specific tracks which are focusing only on one characteristic of the car.
“However, here it’s a more all-rounded track where every characteristic of the car will count. And there I think we’ll see where we’ve done the biggest progress and if we’ve done enough of a step to be fighting with them. But I don’t think we quite have the answer yet.”
On the topic of whether the limited running time on a sprint weekend could hamper their understanding of the upgrades, Leclerc asserted that Ferrari would have a comprehensive understanding of the development of the SF-24 by the end of the weekend. Despite lacking enough practice sessions to test different setups, he stated that the team expects to accumulate sufficient data for analysis given the information they have already collected from the last few races.
“No, I’m confident we’ll have a full understanding.
“Obviously, we already have quite a few data from the last few races. As I said, it focuses on very specific characteristics of the car, but now we’ll have a full weekend on normal track.
“So even though we cannot really play around with the setup because we don’t have enough sessions to do so, we’ll have plenty of data, hopefully, at the end of this weekend. So, that will be enough to understand how much of a step forward we’ve done.”
In terms of this weekend being a test of how well the recent upgrades have worked, Leclerc was asked to share his opinion on how significant the results would be in determining the trajectory of the 2025 season. At the same time, the media wanted the Ferrari driver to comment on whether Austin can be labelled as a make-or-break weekend in terms of validating all the correlation work that has been going on back at the factory.
Despite calling this race weekend significant, Leclerc refused to classify it as more consequential than other weekends, which saw Ferrari introduce new upgrade packages. Rather, he reiterated that the data from the Circuit of the Americas would help them gain a better understanding of the car, gauge their progress, and corroborate their belief that they are on the right track.
“For sure, it’s a very important weekend. However, I wouldn’t say that it’s a lot more important than any other weekends where we’ve brought upgrades.
“And, as I said, those upgrades that we’ve brought in the past few races was difficult to judge. Now it’s a good track to judge them. And hopefully we have positive feedbacks out of them because these are what we believe is the right direction at the moment.
“So I hope we learn something new that we didn’t understood before. But I’m pretty confident that we are going in the right direction and that this weekend we should see the results that we’re expecting from that.”
With regard to the question of how important it is to start a sprint weekend with a platform a team is already familiar with, Leclerc acknowledged that it’s considerably trickier to optimise a completely new package in a single practice session.
As such, given that they are running a spec the drivers and the engineers have insight into, the Monégasque responded that Ferrari is well-prepared and optimistic about the car meeting their expectations when it hits the track this weekend.
“I think it is important. I mean, let’s say it’s a lot less risky. I mean, it’s very risky to start with a completely new car on a weekend where you only have one free practice session.
“And basically you’ve got to change the car back from free practice to quali and you’re going to quali with a new car, not having done any setup options or whatsoever. So it puts you a lot on the back foot if there’s something that you did not expect that happens during FP1.
“But we’ve done a lot of our homework coming into this weekend, where as I said, we know this car because it’s not like we are bringing anything new for this weekend. So we know this car on specific characteristics.
“So that gives us enough confidence that we’ll hit the track and everything will be working properly.”
