Pessimistic Charles Leclerc concedes: "Our performance is not as good as last year"

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc shared a rather pessimistic outlook towards the 2023 Australian GP, as he admitted that the car is not as good as it was last season.

The Ferrari driver secured pole position and dominated the race in Australia last season, but this time, the car does not seem to have the same competitiveness. The team have not had a podium finish in the first two races of the 2023 season.

Moreover, Leclerc has already run through his allotted control units for the year. During the pre-race press conference, the Ferrari driver admitted that while he has great memories from 12 months ago, he does not expect similar results this time:

"Yeah, good memories. But we are already looking … for this year, we are not coming into this race in the same situation as we were last year, I think. Clearly, our performance is not as good as last year. But we are working massively to try and come back at the front. Last year’s are good memories, as we can see on the images now."

He added:

"Everybody was really happy. But again, we are fully motivated to be back in the front; we know where we need to work on. I don't think there will be any miracles for this weekend. But after that, we've got a three-week break, and we'll try to use it in the best way possible in order to bring upgrades as quickly as possible on the car.

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Ferrari focussing on improving race pace disparity - Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc emphasised that the team is focused on improving race pace of the car. In terms of qualifying, Leclerc was competitive with Max Verstappen in Bahrain, but the long runs were a concern. He said:

“I think that in qualifying we’ve been quite good since the beginning of the season. Where we need to focus on is the race where our car is extremely 'peaky'.

"When all the conditions are right, we seem to be able to extract the performance out of our package, but whenever the conditions are changing a little bit with a heavier car, when you see a little bit more the limitations of the car, that’s where you struggle, so we are trying to focus on that."

Charles Leclerc was only a few laps away from securing a podium finish in Bahrain. The Ferrari driver will hope to achieve the same in Melbourne this weekend to boost the sagging morale of the team.