Charles Leclerc admits Ferrari is facing a significant challenge in fighting its way to third in the Constructors’ Championship by the end of the 2020 season.
The Maranello-based outfit currently sits sixth in the standings, 24 points down on Racing Point in third, who leads McLaren by just six points.
Ferrari enjoyed its best result of the year last time out in Turkey with Sebastian Vettel and Leclerc claiming third and fourth respectively, putting it just six points behind fifth-placed Renault.
However, with just three races remaining, Leclerc concedes that the aim of finishing third will be a huge task for Ferrari to achieve.
“That’s definitely the target but realistically it’s going to be very, very difficult,” Leclerc said.
“We need to have three perfect weekends so we need to focus on ourselves and see whether we can make it or not.
“I believe it will obviously depend on how good the work we do [is] and how consistent they [rivals] will be in the next three weekends.“
This weekend will be Leclerc’s first visit to Bahrain since he claimed his maiden career pole position at last year’s event.
The Monegasque driver was on course for his first win in Formula 1 before a power unit issue slowed his progress, dropping him to third at the finish line.
Leclerc is hoping that the Ferrari’s strong history at Bahrain, an event it has won six times, will serve it well this time around.
“It [2019 Bahrain GP] was a painful one obviously,” Leclerc reflected. “I had my first pole so that’s a very good memory and then unfortunately in the race we had a technical problem that stopped us from winning.
“We were very competitive and in the past also Ferrari has always been competitive here so hopefully we can have a good weekend starting from tomorrow.”
