Leclerc: Improving 'Sunday execution' a priority for Ferrari

Charles Leclerc says Ferrari's priority on the operational side of things for 2023 must be to improve its "Sunday execution as a whole".

The Scuderia hit the ground running at the start of 2022 campaign, with Leclerc winning two of the first three races.

Even considering Red Bull's early reliability issues, Ferrari's F1-75 was in a class of its own in terms of pure pace. However, the team itself struggled to measure up.

From strategy errors to driver mistakes and operational missteps, Ferrari's edge quickly disappeared to the benefit of Red Bull and Max Verstappen whom, once they had overhauled Leclerc in the championship, never looked back and irresistibly broke loose.

With four races to go, Leclerc now has Sergio Perez to contend with in the Drivers' standings, with the Mexican holding a single point advantage over the Monegasque ahead of this weekend round of racing in Austin.

But a runner-up spot in the championship is a secondary concern for Leclerc whose focus will be on laying down the groundwork for next season in the remaining races of 2022.

"It's always nicer to finish second than third," said Leclerc. "But my main focus is not really on that, it's mostly on trying to use these last four races for us to be challenging for the world championship next year.

"We'll try to use these last four races in order to be a better team for next year."

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Asked at COTA about the area where Ferrari needs to improve, Leclerc replied: "I think, honestly, it's Sunday execution as a whole.

"So this is loads of things. It's tyre management, as we've seen in the last race, it's still a weak point.

"Communication, strategy, reliability, just to be a stronger team coming to Sunday and to actually finalise the weekend in the best way possible. Because on the Saturday we've been often very strong, but the Sunday sometime things fell apart."

Ferrari has relied this season on a specific process to analyse and understand its mistakes. Leclerc says the team's procedures won't change next year.

"I think we always go through the same process," he explained. "Whenever there's a mistake or something going wrong, you always try and analyse from where that's coming.

"And then once you understand from where it's coming, you're trying to look forward. This is what we've done this year, and that we'll continue to do."

The five-time Grand Prix winner says he's already seen some improvements, notably in the all-important area of tyre management.

"Well, I think for communication strategy, etcetera, that's been a few races now we've been working on it," he said. "And I've already seen positive signs. So that is good.

"And then there's the tyre management, as we've seen in the last race. Where this is a bit more difficult, we need to identify all the causes of it. But this is a continuous work that we are doing, and that we are getting better at.

"And I think we've seen it this year in some races we've been very good with tyre management, the only thing we need to be is to be good in very specific situations.

"Like in Japan, the Sunday was a bit cooler, obviously, it was raining also. And then when it's a bit of an unexpected situation, that's where we probably are not as good as maybe Red Bull is.

"So on that we need to work."

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