Charles Leclerc has tried to place to mattress claims from Isack Hadjar that Ferrari had the quickest automobile within the Singapore Grand Prix, which its driver dubbed “nonsense”.
The Frenchman made the declare that if Pink Bull teammate Max Verstappen had been driving the Scuderia’s SF-26 on the Marina Bay Circuit, he would have gained by a much bigger margin.
This was coupled with Hadjar’s evaluation that he’s persevering with to search out the RB22 a troublesome automobile to drive, on a weekend the place the Maranello-based squad threatened to be Verstappen’s principal competitors.
Alas, Verstappen went on to win the race comfortably, with Leclerc second and teammate Lewis Hamilton sixth.
Chatting with media forward of this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, Leclerc, when requested by Motorsport Week for his tackle Hadjar’s opinion, dismissed the declare out of hand.
“Properly, initially, I believe it’s nonsense to begin saying these sorts of issues,” he stated. “Isack has no concept what sort of automobile we drive, and I do not know what sort of automobile he drives.
“I believe it’s such a decent discipline that it’s very, very troublesome for us to foretell. Sure, after all, we have now an concept of how we shall be on this observe.
“However, when you’re talking about such effective margins, it depends actually on optimising your bundle, and that has a a lot greater affect than what we count on when it comes to vehicles.”
Leclerc opined that, given the topsy-turvy nature of the season, through which Mercedes has largely dominated by fallen away not too long ago, and with McLaren additionally having a short interval of superiority, predicting efficiency from the large 4 at COTA shall be onerous.
“I believe the one outlier in the previous few races is possibly Mercedes, that we anticipated to be additional forward than they really have been,” he continued.
“In the event that they handle to lastly unlock the efficiency that we had in thoughts for them in the previous few races, then they are going to be additional forward than any others.
“However in any other case, it’s going to be very tight.”
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