“These are the priorities...”: Charles Leclerc vents his frustration after suffering the worst start of his F1 career

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was left frustrated after his second retirement of 2023 at the Australian GP, marking the worst start to a season of his career in F1.

Leclerc, who started P7, made a great start and found himself battling against the likes of Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll, and teammate Carlos Sainz in Turn 1. However, he was sent out of the race after he and Stroll made contact in Turn 3 and he beached his SG-23 in the gravel.

Speaking to Motorsport Italy, the Monegasque driver said:

"I don't usually take long breaks when things go wrong. We have to keep working to improve the car, obviously, making the most of the time we have available. Carlos is showing a good pace today, we hope to do better and better."

"At the moment, I don't have long-term goals for this season. We have to think about finishing race by race without taking penalties and having problems. These are the priorities at this historic moment."

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"I'm waiting for the next race to understand how and how much our race pace can be better" - Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc, who has scored only six points from three races, said that he is looking forward to racing in Baku and understanding more about the car for the rest of the season.

Urging Ferrari to further improve the car, he said:

"It's clear that Ferrari should and should improve the car. We were waiting a lot for this race because, as we're seeing from Carlos, we could have done something very interesting. We made a few set-up changes and I think that in terms of race pace, we could have seen a good improvement".

He added:

"I'm waiting for the next race to understand how and how much our race pace can be better. In qualifying here, we weren't able to put anything together on the good lap, but we know that the potential is there. Now it's a question of understanding how much we can improve in the race."

Regarding the incident, Leclerc added:

"I've already reviewed the incident also from the camera car. I knew the race would be long. In Turn 1 I was calm but in Turn 3 there was space. Honestly, I didn't plan to overtake, but Lance braked much earlier than usual because of what Fernando did."

It would be fascinating to see if Leclerc and Ferrari can bounce back heading into the European leg of the season and get some good points for the first time in 2023.