Leclerc: Ferrari missing ‘pure pace’ to target F1 Constructors’ title

Charles Leclerc says Ferrari’s consistency has been one of the team’s strongest assets this season, yet the Italian outfit is still lacking the “pure pace” to fight McLaren for the world title in F1.

With only six races remaining, Ferrari finds itself third in F1’s Constructors’ standings, 75 points behind leaders McLaren, and 34 points adrift from runner-up Red Bull Racing.

The Scuderia has come away from its recent run of three consecutive races – which included Leclerc’s win at Monza – with a healthy bag of points that has left the team 75 points behind McLaren in F1’s Constructors’ standings.

On consistency alone, Leclerc reckons that Ferrari remains a contender for the title. But after finishing fifth in last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, Leclerc admitted that his team isn’t quite at the level of its rivals in terms of speed.

However, the Monegasque underscored the importance of capitalizing on any mistakes McLaren or Red Bull might make – hence the emphasis on consistency.

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"I think if we keep being consistent and not having too many missed opportunities, we will do the count at the end and hopefully we'll be enough to get the constructors' [title]," Leclerc explained, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"But on pure pace, I don't think we are yet at the level to fight for the constructors. I don't see ourselves too much in the fight, but if they make mistakes then we might end up in the fight like we are now."

One caveat that Leclerc inserted into his discourse is the fact that Monza, Baku and Singapore were tracks that didn’t fully test the weaknesses of Ferrari’s SF-24, particularly the latter’s struggles in high-speed corners where porpoising reared its ugly head over the summer.

"As much as the last two races were good, I think we've always been saying we need to be careful to not have wrong expectations because McLaren still have a better car than us, like quite a bit,” noted this year’s Italian Grand Prix winner.

"We have some tracks that will be very close, some others where we'll be further away. Before this race we were quite close and we never really had the fastest car apart from maybe Monaco, and in Monza we were quite strong as well."

While overhauling McLaren in the championship is a tall order for Ferrari, Carlos Sainz reckons that the Italian outfit can bridge the gap to Red Bull to seize the runner-up spot.

"McLaren definitely has the upper hand that they are the favorites for winning it," the Spaniard said.

"We still have Red Bull in our sights, and obviously McLaren, if they start going south or they start having problems, so we need to keep ourselves in it."

Sainz said that beating Red Bull to second place would still be a meaningful achievement for the Maranello team, given the difficulties they faced earlier this year.

"It would show good resilience by the team after a tough part of the year where we gave up a lot of points and a lot of development curve there,” added the future Williams charger.

"But Red Bull is going to come back strong with upgrades at the end of the season once they've understood what they did wrong with their car, so it's not going to be easy to beat them either."

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