14/10/2024
NEWS STORY
Ferrari's senior performance engineer, Jock Clear denies that Charles Leclerc is only really strong in qualifying.
Fact is that after almost seven seasons in F1, the first of which, admittedly, was with Sauber, the Monegasque has scored just 7 victories, yet has started from pole on 23 occasions, and as we are always being told there are no points for pole... yet.
Clear, who has worked with world champions Jacques Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, insists that the youngster is the real deal.
"We all know what he's capable of," he tells the F1 Nation podcast, "we've seen that over a few years now.
"His reputation in qualifying has certainly been cemented over those years," he continues, "in so much as people tended to say to me two years ago, three years ago 'yeah, but he's nowhere near as good in the race as he is in qualifying'. And you think, well, that's not really fair, it's just that he's very, very good at qualifying."
Of course, Leclerc - like many before him - has suffered as a result of Ferrari's strategic errors, not to mention the lack of competitiveness of some of the team's recent cars.
Last year the Italian team usually starred on Saturday only to fall apart on race day, while this year, in a bid to resolve the situation, the Maranello outfit's qualifying performances have mostly not been up to scratch leaving its drivers with all the work to do come Sunday.
"This year you have seen the result, really, of a development on the car side and a development on the driver side, that you recognise that there's no points on Saturday and all the points come on Sunday," says Clear.
"Therefore I think it's probably true that we've shifted our focus slightly to making the car a better race car.
"Tyre management is of course always a hot topic," he adds. "But we've seen Charles do some very good races. "I remember back in '22 in Austria, where Max really struggled with tyre degradation and Charles won that race with a really good drive.
"It's not that Charles historically hasn't been good on tyres," he adds, "I think that it's we as a combination haven't been focussed that well on tyres.
"I think what we've seen this year is the result of us being more focussed on getting the car working really well in the race and looking after those tyres and Charles learning from previous years and honing those skills of tyre management, but also race management," he concludes.