Nothing less than returning the F1 world title to the House of Maranello will satisfy Ferrari this season, insists Charles Leclerc.
It's a predictable ambition for the Scuderia, the most successful team in the history of Grand Prix racing, but that has alluded the Italian outfit since 2008, or since 2007 if one takes into account the Drivers' championship.
Ferrari was in the running for the title in the first part of last season before the team lost its footing against Red Bull due to reliability issues and strategy missteps, not to mention the bulls superior development pace.
With those weaknesses now hopefully solved and corrected, can Ferrari take the title down to the wire and finally prevail in Abu Dhabi?
"Well, that’s the goal, for sure," replied Leclerc, who unsurprisingly singled out Red Bull as the team to beat once again this season.
"They’ve had a strong start, Red Bull, and Max seems to be very, very strong. It’s only testing, so it’s difficult to quantify by how much but it seems that they are a bit in front, compared to us.
"So we’ve got some work to do but it’s only the beginning. But the goal is definitely to go one better."
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Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur underscored his outfit's productive three-day test in Bahrain and the positive mood inside the team. But those benefits alone won't earn the Scuderia its long awaited champion's trophy.
Leclerc argues that teams are still in the dark when it comes to predicting the pecking order and the spreads between the top contenders.
"We didn’t show everything – but Red Bull didn’t show everything," he said. "Nobody showed everything. We will only see in Qualifying.
"So yeah, it’s very difficult to know exactly how we are. But global picture just tells me we are maybe a bit behind."
©Ferrari
Leclerc reckons that F1's in-season development race will ultimately decide who gets top honours at the end of the year.
"It’s important, but as we’ve seen last year, it’s not everything," commented Leclerc, referring to who wins the first race of the season. "And the development throughout the season is as important if not more.
"So yeah, I think we’ve had anyway very good testing in a way, that we did a lot of laps, we didn’t have any reliability problems. And we did all the tests that we wanted to do in order to do all the scan that we wanted to do on the on the car, which is really, really important.
"So the tests were positive. Now to see exactly where we are compared to the others. We’ll have to wait."
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