Charles Leclerc chooses turbulent GP for Ferrari as his personal best F1 race in 2022

Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc has indicated the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring as a personal best win from an up-and-down 2022 Formula 1 season for the Maranello team.

Charles Leclerc was seen as a title contender after the strong display of the F1-75 car in the pre-season testing session, and everything seemed to be going in the right direction after a great race victory in the first round of the season, at the Bahrain International circuit, where Ferrari secured a memorable one-two finish. The Monegasque driver then finished second in Saudi Arabia, but another race victory in round three of the 2022 Formula 1 campaign, at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne showed the F1-75 had the potential to challenge for the titles based on the pace and speed seen in the start of the year.

Unfortunately the Maranello team’s hopes of winning the championships gradually fell away due to power unit reliability problems, a few driver errors and operational mistakes from the Italian side’s pit wall.

Yet the season that has recently ended was still a marked improvement at least in terms of performance for Scuderia Ferrari, who was able to capitalize on the new rules and regulation to return to fighting for race wins. When asked to pinpoint his personal highlight from the 2022 championship, Charles Leclerc pointed out to the round 11 victory at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, an event that also saw the dramatic reliability issues that befell teammate Carlos Sainz and prevented the Maranello team from securing a one-two finish in Red Bull’s home race:

“My best one is probably Austria,” Charles Leclerc replied when quizzed about his best race this year – “It felt particularly good after the previous races that didn’t go our way, so Austria was a really good one. We had a very good tyre management, very good pace from the first lap to the last one. So it felt good.” – the Monegasque driver added.

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While in the second part of the season Ferrari fell behind Red Bull also in terms of race pace, which allowed Max Verstappen to win the Drivers’ Championship with several races before the end, Charles Leclerc took the most Pole Positions in 2022: his nine P1 qualifying results showed the F1-75 challenger indeed had a solid fundamental performance. Charles Leclerc shared his thoughts on the main differences regarding the positive results in qualifying and the weaker Sundays:

“I think with new tyres and low fuel it was a really strong car. The feeling was really good. We were struggling a little bit more on the Sunday, especially with tyre degradation, struggling to put the car in the right place for it to be nice on tyres, and we’ve paid the price quite often on Sunday. A very, very fast car the Saturday, a bit more difficult to understand on the Sunday.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded.