01/07/2021
NEWS STORY
Having driven a virtual version of Ferrari's proposed 2022 contender, Charles Leclerc admits that it feels "very different" to its predecessor the SF21.
The Monegasque is the first driver to experience the great hope for F1's future - albeit the simulated version - as the sport prepares for the biggest overhaul of its rules in living memory, aimed at levelling the playing field and spicing up the racing.
"It feels very different," Leclerc told reporters at the Red Bull Ring as the Austrian Grand Prix weekend got underway. "It's a question mark for everyone whether we are developing well or not.
"It's such a different project," he continued, "it's very, very early days, so nobody knows where we are positioning ourselves compared to the others. But we are working on it."
Asked what input he and his teammate, Carlos Sainz are having, he replied: "It is difficult, because for now it's only numbers and predictions, but we can definitely give our feedback, especially in the simulator.
"We’re lucky to have a very good simulator in Ferrari," he continued, "and we can try different things in that simulator and there, the driver input is very, very important. On other things for now, it's very early days for us to actually say something.
"The only thing we can do is try to work in the best way possible with Carlos to try and explain what are the weaknesses of this year's car, try to understand why we have those weaknesses and try to not reproduce those mistakes for next year's car, even though the project is completely different.
"So I would say on the simulator, we've got quite a big input and we can help a lot, and also with this year's feedback to try and help the team to work in the right direction and for them to know exactly what they need to go quick."
Following the nightmare that was Paul Ricard, last weekend's result was pretty much unexpected by the Italian team which admits to a long-term issue with front tyre wear.
"There's been a lot of work between Paul Ricard and Austria," said Leclerc. "Of course I don't think we expected such a step, but it's also a result of the work of the team.
"But we shouldn't get carried away," he admitted. "As big of a surprise as it was, in a bad way, in Paul Ricard, it's been a very, very good surprise also this Sunday. But we need to understand exactly how we managed to get that result on Sunday.
"We've got some things that we think are helping that performance last Sunday, but we don't understand the whole picture of it, so first to try and reproduce this type of performance consistently throughout the year, we'll have to understand why we managed to do that on Sunday."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Spielberg, here.