"A gap we had never seen"- Charles Leclerc discloses the time when he 'realised' that he wasn't going to be 2022 F1 champion

Charles Leclerc says that he stopped believing that he was going to win the World Championship this year about halfway into the season. He revealed that after the summer break, he was quite hopeful of catching up with Max Verstappen and winning the title. But after the Belgian Grand Prix, he realized that it was impossible for him to win this year against Verstappen. He claimed that the gap he observed at Spa-Francorchamps was much larger than he had anticipated. He told RacingNews365,

"We saw that gap in performance between us and Red Bull at Spa, a gap we had never seen in the first part of the year, so I knew it was going to be very difficult."

The Belgian Grand Prix was a good shot for Charles Leclerc as he started right behind Max Verstappen on P15. But a dominating drive from the Dutchman saw him win the race, while Leclerc could only finish P6—a major difference between Red Bull and Ferrari. After witnessing Verstappen's dominance on the track, Leclerc concluded that this would not be his year.

"After the Belgian Grand Prix I realised that I was not going to win the world championship."

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Charles Leclerc "not focused" on the title for this season anymore

Charles Leclerc and Ferrari dominated the start of the season as they scored maximum points in Bahrain with a 1 - 2 finish and then kept the momentum going for a few races. However, both strategic and driver errors have pushed them further away from their goal of winning the championship this year. As Leclerc revealed, he is now focused more on finishing the season in a "good way."

"It looks very, very difficult to win the title, but I don't want to speak too much about the championship, I'm not really focusing on that. There are still a few races to go and I'm doing everything I can to finish the season in a good way and get better as a team on Sundays."

As we head into the Japanese Grand Prix, Max Verstappen has a positive shot at winning the championship in the race itself. He only has to stay 8 points ahead of Leclerc & 6 points ahead to do that. If he manages to win with a fastest lap, he will be crowned the champion. This is quite likely to happen given his history this entire season with qualifying and winning counts.