Charles Leclerc has denied Ferrari will abandon hope of a championship charge early in the season in order to focus on next year’s car.<\/p>\n
The F1 challengers will undergo significant changes next year under a fresh set of technical rules aimed at both the chassis and power units.<\/p>\n
Getting a head start on constructing the new cars could offer an advantage at the start of the sport’s new era, and it’s a tactic some teams are likely to take later this year.<\/p>\n
Following a pre-season boost with the arrival of Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari has not presented itself as a championship contender in the opening rounds of the campaign with McLaren setting the pace out front.<\/p>\n
When asked by RacingNews365<\/strong> if the year would be another missed opportunity if rapid improvements aren’t found, Leclerc replied: \u201cFor it to be a missed opportunity, there needs to be an opportunity at one point.<\/p>\n \u201cFor now, we haven’t been at the level where we want to be from the beginning of the season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still a long season, and we shouldn’t give up. We are going to push until the very end.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think one can go with the other as well. We very often say, \u2018let’s switch to next year’s car straight away\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThese kind of things, more and more with the new structures in F1, they can go parallel to one another.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think you can be extreme in one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n Ferrari has not won an F1 title since the 2008 campaign when it topped the constructors’ championship ahead of McLaren.<\/p>\n Leclerc asserted the team will only switch complete focus to next year’s car when any mathematical title hope for this season is eliminated.<\/p>\n \u201cThat doesn’t mean that we are only focusing on this season, forgetting about next season or vice versa,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we are trying to do the best in both worlds and we’ll see where that leads us.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as the chances of a championship this year are not possible anymore, then it probably makes sense to fully focus on 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc has denied Ferrari will abandon hope of a championship charge early in the season in order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[859,4199,1076,1074,1077,1075,997,707,4200,998,1073,1072,1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-52271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-f1-calendar","11":"tag-f1-live","12":"tag-f1-results","13":"tag-f1-standings","14":"tag-ferrari","15":"tag-formula-1","16":"tag-formula1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motorsport","20":"tag-racing","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114404630620627547","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}