Charles Leclerc advises Ferrari to ignore criticism and focus on work to be done

Ferrari star Charles Leclerc believes his team needs to ignore the criticism it is receiving and focus on the job.

In an interview with Motorsport-Magazin, the driver was asked whether he was affected by the criticism or if he had any thoughts about it.

In response, Leclerc said he does not pay much attention to the criticism that comes his or the team's way. He added that he always advises the team to focus on the job rather than the negativity.

The 25-year-old said:

"I don't focus on that. I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of negativity around us, but I don't think we should focus on that. This is not going to help us go anywhere. I think we just should focus on our things.

"I'm always much more vocal about my mistakes than anybody else, when I'm in the media. Whenever we do mistakes as a team, I prefer to tackle it in a different way, not speaking publicly but inside the team, for it to be clear inside the team and this is my approach."

According to Charles Leclerc, Formula 1 can be a complex sport, so teams need to put more focus on internal dynamics rather than external discussion or criticism. He said:

"When things are going badly, people are criticizing and sometimes without any reasons behind it. Formula 1 is a very, very complex sport. I think it's very, very difficult to understand what exactly is going on until you are actually working inside your environment.

"We shouldn't get affected by whatever is going [on] around us. [We should] just stick with the work we have to do, be very honest within the team, and work from there."

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Charles Leclerc pays tribute to Sebastian Vettel

When asked about his views on the retiring Sebastian Vettel, Charles Leclerc said that the German was the hardest worker in the F1 paddock.

The Ferrari driver also revealed that he learned a lot about work ethics from Vettel, especially when he first joined the team. He said:

“He is the hardest worker in the F1 paddock, for sure. When I came from Alfa Sauber, I arrived casually in the morning and he had already been sitting in the office for an hour and a half.

"I took this approach from him because now I also arrive quite early and leave very late. But when it happened for the first time I asked myself: Why does he do that? What does he need so much time for?"

He added:

“With more experience and the more I talked to him, the more I saw that there are little details that I didn’t take care of at the beginning, but he did. That has made a difference. I learned a lot of things from him. Especially at that point in my career, when I was still very young, it was good to have an experienced driver like Seb by my side.”

Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel were teammates at Ferrari in 2019 and 2020 before the German moved to Aston Martin in 2021.