"Carlos and Charles are doubting the decisions" - Charles Leclerc's ex-teammate identifies this as major 'problem' for Ferrari's inconsistency in 2022 F1 season

Former Sauber F1 driver Marcus Ericcson believes that Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz no longer have faith in the team's strategy anymore. While speaking to SkyF1, Ericcson was questioned about what was the one thing that he could pinpoint as the problem that the Scuderia is facing right now. He said:

“I think the problem, from a driver perspective, and I think we’ve seen it quite a few times this year is that both Carlos and Charles are doubting the decisions that the pit wall is doing during a race. Obviously, that trust that you need to have as a driver with your team, it seems to be lacking a bit between Ferrari and their drivers and, over a season, that’s not good.”

Ericcson also doubted that Ferrari could even stage a comeback as the team had already conceded far too many points. He said:

“So it’s definitely a big question mark at the moment. Now they’ve lost so many points, I don’t know if [there’s] any chance at all that they could get that back now in the second half of the season.”

The Swedish driver also touched upon the frustrations that Charles Leclerc might be facing this season as he has already lost far too many points. There was also the suggestion that maybe Leclerc was pushing too hard in France, which resulted in an accident. Speaking about the Monegasque, his former teammate said:

“I think he’s very frustrated. I think that he’s been fast this year, but it’s just been a lot of issues. What happened in Paul Ricard, one of the reasons why it happened, I think it’s because Charles is a bit frustrated – he wants to win races. He wants to get back in the championship hunt and it just is not being the case.”

He added:

“Then he’s pushing, maybe a bit too hard. So it’s not ideal. It’s gonna be tough for Charles because I think he’ll feel he has had the opportunity to really fight for a championship this year. And he hasn’t been able because of quite a few things out of his control.”

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Ferrari has failed to capitalize on a very strong car

Ericcson also talked about the gravity of the failure of the Italian team as there is always something that is going wrong in the race. Ferrari has had a fast car all season and despite that, the team finds itself far behind in the championship. He said:

“They’ve been so fast all year. And still, they are managing to be 80 points off the lead of the championship and they seem to constantly mess it up, right? If it’s not strategy, it’s the car breaking down, or Charles crashing. There’s always something, it feels like, and it’s just so crazy when they have such a good car, and they can’t seem to capitalise on it.”

Charles Leclerc currently faces an 80-point deficit in the championship to Max Verstappen with only 9 races left in the season. It will be interesting to see whether he can mount a comeback after the summer break ends.