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Charles Leclerc joined Ferrari back in 2019. Ever since then, he has been paired with his race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros. Padros has been part of the Scuderia since 2018 and has been working with Leclerc since the very beginning of the Monegasque's time with the team.
In the 2022 F1 season, Ferrari were criticized for their poor judgment when it came to strategy calls, particularly in the case of Charles Leclerc, who was fighting for his very first potential world championship title at the start of the year. Despite having a strong car, the team were simply unable to keep up with the performances of Max Verstappen and Red Bull, who secured both titles.
Over the year, the radio conversations between Marcos and Leclerc have become quite the talking point, given the level of miscommunication and lack of conveyance of data.
The Spaniard's career as a motorsport engineer started with the BNC Racing Team in 2006 before he made it to F1, where he worked as a Performance Engineer for the HRT F1 Team for two years. Soon after, he moved on to work for Williams F1, where he was Felipe Massa's performance engineer.
Before taking on his current role at Ferrari, Marcos worked as the chief race engineer for NASCAR team Richard Childress Racing in the United States. He evidently brought plenty of experience when he landed his role at the Scuderia.
Charles Leclerc says Ferrari need to "focus on finding a next step" to compete with Red Bull in 2023
Charles Leclerc admitted that despite a strong start to the 2022 F1 season, Ferrari fell prey to "reliability, strategy, and tire management" issues throughout the year, causing the team to suffer when it came to competing against Red Bull.
As reported by PlanetF1, the 25-year-old reflected on the 2022 season finale in Abu Dhabi, where he finished second in the race behind two-time world champion Max Verstappen. Leclerc said:
“Yes [it was great to finish on a high], especially after a season like that. It has been a very difficult season for the whole team. We started extremely well then had loads of problems with the reliability, strategy and tyre management later on in the season.”
“That wasn’t easy to manage knowing that the potential was in the car to do very well, so to finish on a high at least is good. Now we need to focus on finding a next step for the race pace because Red Bull seems to have found something that we don’t have for now. But it was encouraging to see such a good performance in terms of execution of the race.”
Charles Leclerc finished the 2022 F1 season second in the drivers' standings.
