Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz driven to 'even more motivation' by analyzing Ferrari's issues

Ferrari's innumerable moments of heartbreak over the first half of the 2022 F1 season do not seem to affect Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Both drivers have reportedly recovered and have fully analyzed all that went wrong to get ready for the races after the summer break.

Ferrari have had a particularly frustrating time as a result of reliability issues, poor strategy, or just pure bad luck, but the team's race director Laurent Mekies believes that both drivers have dealt with this gracefully.

As reported by RacingNews365, Mekies said:

“With both these guys, we have had very good highs and we have had very painful lows this season. And in both ways, in both directions, when they come back to the garage, when they have looked at what happened, when they have looked at the data, they are able to reset, to be in the learning mode pretty much after 15 minutes.”

“So you need to separate that from maybe what you can hear on the radio in the heat of the moment when they are racing with a high heart rate. I think it’s two different things. But when they get out of the car and they analyse everything, after an hour they will be back into the analysis mode and showing little emotion in a negative way, no negative emotions, but instead you can see it drives them to even more motivation.”

Throughout the season so far, Charles Leclerc has sent some particularly angry messages over the radio when things have gone out of his control. The 2022 F1 season has been the first of Leclerc's career, where he has had the potential to fight for the world championship title.

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Ferrari do not want Charles Leclerc "to change anything"

Several mistakes by Ferrari in their strategy have cost Charles Leclerc significant championship points over the last few races in the first half of the 2022 F1 season. The Monegasque himself, however, has not been without fault as he made a mistake during the 2022 F1 French GP that forced him to retire from the race. Despite this, the team believes that they have no desire to see Leclerc modify his approach.

Speaking about Leclerc, Laurent Mekies said:

“Let’s start from the speed. He has been showing such outstanding speed this year again that you don’t want to go and touch that aspect, and Charles doesn’t need us to understand, as a great racing driver, to understand where he needs to go in terms of closeness to the limit.”

“He is a master of that and, as we all do, mistakes can happen. I think we don’t look at single mistakes, we look at the strike rate. We look at how extraordinarily you’re able to do things compared to stuff that you do not as good, and I think his strike rate this year has been very, very impressive and we don’t want him to change anything.”

Charles Leclerc currently stands second in the drivers' standings and has a mere five-point advantage over Sergio Perez, who is quickly closing the gap.