07/06/2019
NEWS STORY
While, courtesy of poor strategy and an under par car, Ferrari has not made Charles Leclerc's task easy, it's fair to say that the Monegasque youngster hasn't entirely helped himself.
In Azerbaijan he crashed out in Q2, while in Spain he incurred floor damage that compromised his hopes in Q3.
Admitting that he has tended to be over-eager in Q2, a hangover from his debut season with Sauber last year, the youngster is to take a different approach to qualifying for the remaining races.
"One approach that I probably have changed after Baku was pushing too hard in Q2," he told reporters. "That has been a mistake because we had easy potential to go to Q3 with the car we had and to crash at that time was probably a bit stupid.
"Then in Barcelona, we broke part of the floor," he continued, "but that was pushing too hard, I let the car go and broke the piece. So those are things I had changed after this.
"There's definitely been a few mistakes," he admitted, "there's a change of approach when you arrive in Ferrari. Compared to last year, you can give it all from Q1 to Q3, but as we've seen in Baku maybe it was not very important to give it all in Q2 because we definitely had the potential to do a lot better in Q3.
"There was a few mistakes on my side, and we learn from them, and now I'm looking forward to trying not to reproduce them and hopefully the better times will come."
While Ferrari is giving mixed messages, Sebastian Vettel hinting that the team has a few surprises up its sleeve, as Mattia Binotto insists that there is no quick fix, Leclerc has not given up hope of the Maranello outfit challenging Mercedes for the title.
"I don't wave goodbye until it's done," he said. "It's been a difficult start to the season, I definitely expected more, but we don't need to wave goodbye yet, we need to push until the end and that's what we are doing.
"We are trying to understand our mistakes, and not do them again, and go from there," he added. "I'm pretty sure the results will come."
Asked if he feels that this is the 'Last Chance Saloon' for Ferrari's 2019 aspirations, he replied: "I don't see it that way, of course. There's no need to put ourselves under more pressure, we just need to do our best and maximise what we have."