With four race weekends remaining in the Formula 1 season, the chase for the Constructors’ Championship has turned into a three-way brawl between McLaren, Red Bull, and Ferrari. On the backs of another strong weekend, Ferrari has pulled into second in that fight, leapfrogging over Red Bull in the standings thanks to another double podium in Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix, with Carlos Sainz Jr. taking the victory and Charles Leclerc finishing third.
While the team has started to dream about a Constructors’ Championship, Leclerc admitted on Sunday evening in Mexico City that he is not thinking about a Drivers’ Championship — where he sits third in the standings behind Max Verstappen and Lando Norris — yet.
“On my side, I don’t think about the Drivers’ Championship, realistically. As I was saying earlier, I think first the approach is not to start thinking about the Drivers’ Championship. That doesn’t help me achieve anything more. It’s by focusing race by race,” said Leclerc during the FIA Press Conference in Mexico City. “Of course, there’s part of it that is in my control. And if I win all races, that puts most of the chances on my side. But even if I do that, I’ve got to have Max that has very poor weekends and I don’t rely on that, so I’ll just try and do the best possible end of the season, and then we’ll do the math at the end of the season.”
Leclerc also admitted that he felt as if he was on the back foot all weekend in Mexico City.
“Yeah, I mean, all in all, it’s been a really positive weekend for Ferrari, a little bit less for me personally. I haven’t been on my top game this weekend, but having said that, I think Carlos has been doing just the perfect weekend from the first lap in FP1 to the last one of the race. On my side, I was a little bit on the back foot, missing FP1, and I never really recovered,” said Leclerc. “During the race, I felt like I was relatively quick on the first stint. Unfortunately, I had to do… I was requested to do quite a lot of management for temperatures, but yeah, at the end it was the way it is. I think I’m very happy for the team, very happy for Carlos. He deserves it more than anybody this weekend because he’s been driving better than anyone. And yeah, a good result for the team.”
Later in the press conference, Leclerc conceded that even had he not gone wide on Lap 63, which opened the door for Norris to wrestle away P2 in the end, the McLaren driver was going to catch him eventually.
“Oh, by then I had no chance to stay in front of Lando. Lando was flying, and I think as a team, we’ve been pretty lucky that whatever happened with Max and Lando at the beginning of the race, that slowed him down massively, and his second stint was very, very impressive. So that was a good thing for us, and that probably helped us,” added Leclerc. “On my side, there was no way that I could stay in front. I knew that it would be very difficult. I knew that I had to have an incredible exit out of the last corner, so I tried to put everything… to have a really good exit, went over the limit, lost the car, and lost the position, but I felt it was a question of laps or corners before I lost that position.”
You can see that moment — and Leclerc’s impressive save — here:
Leclerc’s save avoided disaster for Ferrari and helped the team move up one place closer to the top of the Constructors’ Championship. While the result also saw Leclerc move closer to Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship, the Ferrari driver is not looking at that as a true possibility.
Yet.
