Charles Leclerc dismisses Austria podium repeat as Ferrari races to solve issues. Charles dismisses Austria podium repeat.

Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc admitted that he will “not get too carried away” in looking for a repeat of his great runner-up finish in Austria one year ago, while at the same time confirming the Italian side has a race against time to solve its issues following its disappointing performance in the 2021 French Grand Prix.

The Maranello team fnished the race at the Paul Ricard track without any points and now has just a few days available to try to understand its tyre problems before returning to a track where Charles Leclerc managed to score his best result of the year in 2020.

When asked about his expectations for the next race, Charles Leclerc explained: “Yeah last year I came P2 but, let’s say, I was a little bit lucky to get second. We did a good job as a team but there was a bit of luck in that result too. So, let’s not get too carried away too much by that. Coming from the weekend, it was very difficult with the race pace, we are searching for answers. We are going to analyse this and try to use the three days we have available in the best way we can with the team to try and understand what we can try before the race weekend in Austria.” – the Monegasque driver added.

Ferrari suffer tyre degradation issues
High temperatures in the south of France contributed to Scuderia Ferrari’s issues, with the high-speed corners causing its tyres to overheat and degrade more quickly than its competitors.

This weekend will see teams return to the Red Bull Ring in the mountainous region of Austria, where temperatures are likely to be slightly cooler but also with rain forecast, resulting in less issues with the Italian side’s tyres.

Charles Leclerc still wants answers, however. He said: “Hopefully we will find something that will help us for the race. We have a very narrow window where we managed to make the tyres work. Somehow it is very difficult for us to be in that particular window to make them work. We clearly didn’t manage to put them in that window [in France] and we just really struggled with degradation more than others.” – the Ferrari driver concluded.