Charles Leclerc heads into the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend as the winner of F1’s most recent race as he took out the US GP in Austin last Sunday.
It was his third win of the season, equalling the total of Lando Norris in the McLaren. Ferrari is now 48 points behind the Woking-based team in the Constructors’ Championship.
He took advantage of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris going wide in turn 1 to take the lead, and the 27-year-old controlled matters from there to take an eighth career win.
Ferrari had exceptionally strong low-speed performance in Austin — a strong trait of the SF-24. With plenty of slow speed corners in Mexico, they are fancied to be contenders for the win again as the car is also very strong over race stints.
Leclerc is wary of making any predictions as the season continues to be extremely unpredictable, however.
“I mean, it’s very difficult to predict this season race by race.
“Last weekend went extremely well for us. We were particularly strong in races and in race pace. In qualifying, we struggled a little bit more.
“However, on paper, Mexico should be quite a good track for us. But that doesn’t mean we’ll reproduce the kind of performance we’ve done in Austin, we just need to focus on ourselves, focus obviously on FP2 for me, I won’t be doing FP1, Ollie will be in the car for FP1.
“And yeah, just try and maximise the result this weekend, and then we’ll see where it ends up.
“But it’s obviously a very important part of the season, only five races to go, and there’s the Constructors’ title, that is still possible, so we’ll give absolutely everything in order to try and take that one.”
Leclerc and Norris have scored the most points since F1 returned to the action at the Dutch Grand Prix in August — they are tied on 98 each. It’s generally accepted McLaren has had the fastest car at most venues since Miami.
The driver from Monaco beat Piastri in Zandvoort on a weekend that Norris crushed the field, and he finished ahead of both McLarens in Monza to take a superb victory thanks to a 1-stop strategy.
While conceding they had the fastest car in Austin, Leclerc is very pleased at how Ferrari has generally maximised their weekends.
“We’ve been very consistent and I think we’ve been maximising our own performance, which is the most important thing.
“I don’t think we’ve been necessarily the fastest out of those last few races. However, we were the most consistent and we’ve maximised most points against our competitors.
“We had the best car in Austin, though, which is a good thing, because especially coming to the last five races, that’s what we needed, and it’s the best possible way to start this triple header.
“But before that, I don’t think we had the strongest car, but we were doing the best job as a team in order to bring the maximum points home.
“So yeah, that’s our goal until the end of the season, and I hope it will pay off at the end.”
Ferrari started the ground effect era with F1’s fastest car alongside Red Bull Racing, leading to some superb fights in the early part of the season between Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen as the pair battled for victories.
However, car development went in the wrong direction, and the title battle was over long before the season ended.
The start of 2023 was even worse as the SF-23 was extremely unpredictable, leaving the drivers lacking confidence. It also chewed through its tyres, badly hurting the race performance.
Although qualifying got stronger as the campaign went on, the aforementioned issues meant Sainz’s win in Singapore was the sole one of the season.
In 2024, the car has improved immeasurably over a race distance, allowing Leclerc and Sainz to attack and go forward in races. The pair have taken four wins between them to date.
Leclerc explained the SF-24 is getting closer to the balance of the F1-75.
“Obviously, we are getting better and better. I think last year was a very difficult year.
“Two years ago, we were in a better place in terms of balance. But now we are getting back to this kind of balance.
“But the balance doesn’t mean much. I mean, you can have a very competitive car and a very difficult car to drive, and at the end, what matters is the lap time. It’s not how good I feel in the car.
“Sometimes the two goes together, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes a car feels very, very difficult to drive. However, if it feels better than others and that you are faster, then it’s good enough.
“The balance is so much better than a year ago. I think we’ve been struggling in 2023 with the balance of the car.
“We’ve done quite a lot of work on that, and it definitely feels like a big step forward compared to last year.
“But we are slowly going in the right direction and trying to keep improving, obviously.”
