Charles Leclerc has admitted McLaren’s domination has disproven his prediction from 2023 that Red Bull would remain unbeaten until Formula 1‘s next rules change.
Leclerc’s Ferrari began the current regulations in 2022 with the benchmark package, but Red Bull overturned an initial deficit to secure both championships with ease.
Red Bull proceeded to sustain a record-breaking campaign the next time around as the team triumphed in all bar one race, including 10 in a row with Max Verstappen.
That led Leclerc, whose then team-mate Carlos Sainz denied Red Bull an unprecedented clean sweep, to attest it would be “impossible” to catch up under this ruleset.
But while Verstappen retained his crown in 2024, Red Bull’s competitiveness regressed as the season progressed, allowing McLaren to capture the Constructors’ title.
That trend has continued into this campaign as McLaren has obliterated the opposition, taking 12 victories in 16 races to be on course to win a championship double.
“Well, I was clearly wrong, and that’s why I probably won’t be using the word impossible anymore,” Leclerc quipped to media including Motorsport Week.
“McLaren proved all of us wrong. I think they were the big surprise of this year.
“We all thought that, being the last year of those Formula 1 regulations, everybody would be closer, which was the case for Red Bull, Mercedes, and ourselves.
“But McLaren seemed to have found something that we didn’t, and I’ll say to them [that] they did an incredible job.
“Yeah, now it’s up to us to do a better job and try and catch them, but obviously now, it’s kind of late.
“They’ve got quite a big up and down in the championship, and for this year it’s going to be hard.
“We’ll keep focusing on trying to win races as soon as possible, and then we’ll think about what they say.”
Leclerc challenges Ferrari to take the lead on innovation
McLaren’s unrivalled pace in race trim has seen the side have to contend with allegations elsewhere in the paddock about how it has accomplished such a huge step.
But while Ferrari is attempting to decode McLaren’s advantage, Leclerc has highlighted that the emphasis is on the Italian marque to be the class leader in innovation.
“It’s true to say that the paddock is a very small world, in a way, and obviously there are, every year, some mechanics [and] engineers that go from one team to another,” he recognised.
“So you kind of hear things, and then that gives you a direction, and then you start and try to think in which way can they achieve that.
“Also you guys [the media] are a big part of also in trying to find out for us, and that gives us hints.
“But our main job is to try and anticipate that and to be on top of those things and to be the first ones to lead the development in something that hasn’t been done before, because if you just follow, then you end up just being second best.
“So I will say there’s not that much energy, but when you have, especially at the end of an era, a team that does such a step like McLaren did, then it’s obvious that all of the teams are trying to understand what’s going on and what did they find to be so dominant this year.”
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