Charles Leclerc believes Lewis Hamilton is not in a “totally different place” at Ferrari in comparison with his first 12 months with the group. As an alternative, he argues he is merely excited because the duo head right into a bout of latest laws.
Hamilton’s first season in crimson was a disappointing one because the seven-time world champion struggled along with his Italian equipment. It was the saddest we would seen the Briton as weekend after weekend he fought in opposition to the bottom impact traits of the SF-25. However with a brand new set of laws, Hamilton was on cloud 9 as he answered questions from the press at present.
“It is massively totally different to the primary 12 months,” Hamilton stated on the way it felt beginning his second 12 months with the Scuderia. “And a a lot nicer feeling having spent a 12 months on the group, understanding the tradition, understanding methods, discovering methods of working collectively. And I believe we’re in an excellent place now collectively as a group. And I really feel very gelled with the group at present. A lot happier.”
However Leclerc, with extra years beneath his belt at Ferrari than his team-mate, is being cautious to mood his expectations regardless of what appeared like a powerful bout of testing in Bahrain earlier this month.
“I am fairly impartial going into this season,” he advised the media forward of the season-opener. “I’ve had fairly a couple of years with the group now, and I do know what it is like. To be driving for Ferrari could be very, very particular, however with that additionally comes quite a lot of noise and generally expectations that do not actually replicate the true image so I do not actually have any expectations for now.
“I simply go daily. I attempt to do the absolute best job and I hope that which means on Sunday we’re right here celebrating the primary win of the season but when not, we’ll take it from there and attempt to work from that.”
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
Picture by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Pictures through Getty Pictures
He then turned his focus to Hamilton’s positivity to this point this season.
“Whether or not I see Lewis in a special place, I do not. I believe he is simply tremendous excited. He was tremendous excited to affix the group final 12 months, and he is tremendous excited for these new automobiles to reach, similar to I’m. So there’s quite a lot of pleasure actually, to begin this primary race on the correct foot and quite a lot of work additionally behind the scenes from each of us, but additionally for the entire group to attempt to arrive as prepared as attainable for this season.
“It is going to be an fascinating race as a result of through the years with the automobiles we have had earlier than, which have been a little bit bit extra conventional, each time we did a change of regulation, we examined each state of affairs earlier than attending to the primary race.
“With these sorts of automobiles there are nonetheless fairly a couple of eventualities which can be unknown, like security automobile restarts, all these sorts of issues that you simply can not actually reproduce that may give us a couple of surprises so I am trying ahead to that.”
Ferrari will get its first reference factors when it turns a wheel in Friday observe in Melbourne. And are available qualifying, we’ll see if Leclerc was smart in staying impartial.
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