"I don't think many people would have believed"- Charles Leclerc details Ferrari's 'positive point' of 2022 F1 season

Charles Leclerc has had a wonderful season this year. He has already scored more points than in the last two seasons and still has five races to go. Speaking to RacingNews365, the Ferrari driver highlighted Ferrari's positives this season. He also pointed out how the Italian team bounced back after poor performances over the last two years. He said,

"If I take a few steps back and look at the overall picture, I don't think many people would have believed beforehand how good we would be this year. That's really the positive point of this season."

Ferrari has one of the fastest cars on the grid this year. In fact, the team has managed to win a pole in eleven out of seventeen races so far. The car was really quick going into corners and would have been in championship contention had it not been for the team's strategy and pitstop mistakes. Charles Leclerc also commended Ferrari for building a competitive car after two difficult years. He said,

"Everyone is used to it now, because we are almost at the end of the season. But if you look back at 2020 and 2021, those have been two years where we had a very difficult time in terms of performance. That said, we have to take an extra step to really fight for the world title."

The technical changes, which came into effect this year, led to a complete overhaul of the car design. Ferrari came out of the gate with the fastest car and won two out of the first three races in dominating fashion. However, after Red Bull made some changes, Verstappen quickly recovered and outclassed the Italian team. The Dutch driver also built up a championship lead of 104 points.

Ferrari will be looking forward to next season. The team has made positive progress over the last few races, and a clean slate is all the team needs to challenge for the championship.

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Charles Leclerc gave up on the championship after Spa defeat

Charles Leclerc revealed in an interview how he gave up on winning the championship after losing at the Belgian GP. He said,

"After the Belgian Grand Prix I realised that I was not going to win the world championship. We came back just after the summer break and then of course you think back to the first part of the year, but I still believed in the title! Then we saw that gap in performance between us and Red Bull at Spa, a gap we had never seen in the first part of the year, so I knew it was going to be very difficult."

Verstappen started the race from fourteenth on the grid and passed everyone in front, including the Monegasque driver, to win. The crushing defeat finally managed to break Charles Leclerc's spirit. As a result, he started looking forward to next season.