Charles Leclerc rains on Ferrari’s parade with Singapore ‘struggle’ prediction

Sam Cooper 14 Sep 2023 1:45 PM

After the highs on Monza, Charles Leclerc has brought Ferrari fans back down to Earth by conceding he expects the team to struggle this weekend.

While they still did not win at their home circuit, the last grand prix in Monza represented Ferrari’s best race of the season so far with the Scuderia appearing to be able to challenge, if not beat, Red Bull.

But Leclerc is not expecting anything similar in Singapore and conceded that it will be a “struggle” of a weekend.

Charles Leclerc makes Red Bull clear favourites

Leclerc finished fourth, closely behind team-mate Carlos Sainz, in Monza – but the gap to Red Bull ahead was considerably smaller than it has been all season.

Despite some rumours that the Milton Keynes outfit were concerned about the pace shown by Ferrari, Leclerc still labelled them as favourites in Singapore.

“It’s nice to read that but I’m not buying it at all,” he told Sky Sports F1 of the reported Red Bull concerns. “I really think that they will be the strongest this weekend, especially come race day. Quali, maybe it will be close but maybe not.

“I think on a high-downforce track like here, I expect us to struggle more than Monza. I don’t think they [Red Bull] will have any threats, I think they’ll just be the fastest.”

While Monza was a good day for Ferrari, it very nearly was not with the two drivers battling late on in the race and coming close to a collision. Both suggested it was just racing post-grand prix and Leclerc insisted there was no bad blood.

“We really enjoyed it,” Leclerc said looking back. “Then of course we always do a debrief of the race and we discuss about it but nothing special.

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“我认为我们都非常喜欢它。我的意思是,汽车los, I think enjoyed it less than I did!

“It’s part of racing and I honestly really enjoyed it. This is what made me fall in love with racing is the competition, the fighting on track and we’ve had that plenty of times with Max [Verstappen], mostly in karting and a bit in Formula 1, not enough unfortunately.

“It’s good. I think it can only benefit Formula 1 for drivers and the show in general so I enjoyed it.”