Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc Admits Defeat Against “Faultless” Max Verstappen, Sends Stern Warning to Ferrari

The Charles Leclerc from the start of the season would’ve never agreed with the comments from the Charles Leclerc of now. The Ferrari man started the season brilliantly with a competitive car and a real shot at the championship. However, the Leclerc of now has conceded defeat to a “nearly faultless” Max Verstappen and Red Bull.

Red Bull and Max Verstappen have been ruthless this season with the Dutchman amassing 14 wins already in the current season. The team is also on a nine-consecutive race win streak starting from the French GP. With this dominance, Leclerc openly admits Ferrari wasn’t “clean enough” to challenge Red Bull.

“Max and Red Bull have been nearly faultless this season. They’ve done an incredible job and completely deserve to win the title,” he admitted.

Leclerc critically added, “We haven’t been clean enough to challenge them. The performance was probably there but there were too many mistakes – reliability, strategy, also my mistakes cost some points. And on that, we need to get better.”

Read More: Charles Leclerc Reveals the Key Difference Between Battling Against Lewis Hamilton And Max Verstappen

Where the Red Bull team and men were faultless in the current season, Ferrari and co. were arguably the architects of their own downfall on most occasions. This is something the team would look to avoid in the upcoming 2023 season and Leclerc reveals the way to go about it.

Charles Leclerc reveals the way to approach the new season after falling behind Max Verstappen in 2022

There have been a lot of mistakes in 2022 from Ferrari. This a scenario that they will probably not want to repeat in the 2023 season. So when asked about the areas of improvement for 2023, Leclerc had a reply.

“Learning from mistakes. This is the main thing. I also believe that whenever you are into the rhythm of good races then that helps,” he said.

“We had a moment of our season where we struggled a lot and that then pushed people to maybe overdo things and that is where mistakes occur. So on that, I feel we have learned the lesson and hopefully, we won’t do that next year,” Leclerc added on his expectations for 2023.

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Expectations aside, do we see Ferrari putting up a genuine fight for the 2023 title? Moreover, can Ferrari defend the second spot in the 2022 constructors table?