03/06/2021
NEWS STORY
After the near miss of Monaco, Charles Leclerc fears it will be back to reality for Ferrari in Baku this weekend.
While the Scuderia scored an impressive podium result courtesy of Carlo Sainz, for teammate Charles Leclerc it was a case of 'what might have been', after the Monegasque failed to even start his home race despite having grabbed pole position.
While, like Monaco, Baku is a street track, there the differences end, and the youngster fears he will have little opportunity to shine in the same way he did two weeks ago.
I think it will be a bit back to reality now," the Monegasque told reporters as the Baku weekend got underway. "Monaco was a one-off. We were fighting for the victory, which was incredible and very nice for the motivation of everyone.
"But now, with long straights and a bit more high-speed in general, even though there are quite a lot of slow speed corners, I believe we will be back to the to the normal competitiveness that we've had before Monaco," he admitted.
Indeed, Leclerc believes there will be few further opportunities for the Scuderia to perform at the same level as it did in Monaco, the main exception being Singapore.
"If we are looking at the calendar, I think one that could look the most similar to Monaco is probably Singapore," he said. "But then whether it will be as competitive or not, I don't know the conditions are very different, very humid. It's quite a bit warmer. But I if you look at the track characteristics, I think Singapore is the one that gets the closest to Monaco."
Asked to explain why the Ferrari performed so well in Monaco, he explained: "We think the aero actually, even today, with how much aero we have on the car, it's actually quite powerful. So in the low-speed corners, it's a combination of chassis and aero that makes it quite nice.
"We were even stronger on the low-speed in Monaco than we were basically in the low-speed of all the tracks before, so I think there was maybe something more in Monaco that that we need to understand.
"But as I said, Monaco is a one-off, so we shouldn't get carried away too much."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Baku, here.