"You’re always going to make a mistake in a season"- Charles Leclerc defends 2022 F1 French GP crash

Charles Leclerc is not beating himself up too much for the mistake he made in the French GP earlier this season.

In the race, the Ferrari driver was embroiled in a close battle with Max Verstappen. The Red Bull driver opted to pull off an undercut and pitted earlier than expected. Charles Leclerc, as part of a counter-strategy, opted to stay out and extend his lead at the front. However, while pushing to try and open up the gap, the Ferrari driver made a mistake and ended up hitting the wall.

Looking back at the incident, Charles Leclerc told The Race that these things happen during a season. He pointed out that mistakes are a part of driving on the edge throughout the race, saying:

“The toughest moments for me are always my own mistakes because I’m always very harsh with myself and whenever I make a mistake, I always take it in a worse way compared to when it’s somebody else’s."

He added:

"Speaking about my mistakes, yes, I made a mistake in France. But speaking about the season like I’ve done this year… honestly, you’re always going to make a mistake in a season. This one was a costly one because I was obviously in the lead but it happens.”

Charles Leclerc did commend the team on the job done so far to bring the car closer to the front. He admitted that they need better race execution and better pace on Sundays to win the title.

He said:

"The team has done an incredible job of doing such a step forward in terms of performance from last year to this year. But I believe that the last bit is as hard as the bit we’ve done now. To go and find the last details, to actually be a strong team coming on Sunday and making the right calls, the right decisions at the right time, in different conditions, is something super important."

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Ferrari has gotten better according to Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc did admit that Ferrari had gotten much better in the last few races. He admitted, however, that there was still improvement that needed to be made to reach the goal that the team had set for itself. He said:

“We’ve been working on it a lot in the last three races [in 2022]. And I think we’ve made some steps forward already. But we need to keep working because as we saw in Suzuka, we’ve been struggling with tyre degradation. We’ve seen that we’ve definitely made a step forward on Sunday since the last few races but it’s not yet consistent. And we still need to work on that.”

Leclerc will be hoping for a better showing by Ferrari next season as he hopes to put together a better challenge for the title.