Champions League shows Ferrari can’t give up – Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc has insisted that Ferrari can still win both titles in Formula 1 this season, pointing to this week’s Champions League comebacks as inspiration.

Ferrari has yet to win a race this season and trails Mercedes by 74 points in the Constructors’ Championship, with fifth-placed Leclerc 40 points down on Valtteri Bottas.

Liverpool beat Barcelona 4-0 to overcome a 3-0 deficit from the first leg while Tottenham were 2-0 down on aggregate against Ajax in the second leg but scored three second-half goals to win the match and progress through to the final.

“I think as a team and as a driver you always need to be motivated and never give up,” he said.

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“The Champions League was a good example, and this is the mentality in the team.

“We are here to win and this is what we want to do, so we are doing everything in our hands to improve and hopefully the results will come.

“Performance wise I think there is more to come. I don’t think it is as bad as the championship looks.

“We have had opportunities, once I did a mistake, on the other one we had an issue that cost us a better result.

“I think overall the performance is there, we just need to try and put everything together, in most of the occasions to be using our full potential.”
Leclerc also expressed his belief that Ferrari’s position post-testing was overly hyped compared to the strength of Mercedes.

“I think Mercedes were not that far in testing, I think the last day was the only day when they actually pushed a little bit and in the last laps they did a very similar lap time to ours,” he said.

“I don’t think they were ever very far back and we don’t even know how much they pushed in the last day of testing. I think it’s a bit…  it’s not right to say we were a lot far ahead after testing.

“But hopefully the improvement we bring here will be a step forward and then we’ll see for the rest of the season.

“Normally Barcelona is quite representative for the performance of the car so hopefully we’re strong here.”