Charles Leclerc admits Ferrari needs “three perfect weekends” to have any chance of snatching third in the Constructors’ Championship.
After their best result of 2020 so far in Turkey, where Sebastian Vettel was third and Leclerc fourth, the Scuderia is 24 points behind Racing Point with just the final Middle East tripleheader to go this season.
And though the Monegasque accepts hauling in that gap is unlikely, that isn’t going to stop Ferrari from trying.
“That’s definitely the target but realistically it’s going to be very, very difficult,” Leclerc said on Thursday.
“We need to have three perfect weekends so we need to focus on ourselves and see whether we can make it or not.
“I believe it will obviously depend on how good the work we do [is] and how consistent they [our rivals] will be in the next three weekends.”
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Frustratingly for Leclerc, the result in Istanbul could have been better after he moved ahead of Sergio Perez into second on the final lap, only to get it wrong entering the final three corners and slip to fourth.
“While looking back at it there were two things,” he reflected.
“One, that I was too optimistic and I missed my braking point, not by much but enough to miss the corner and then also I think the car was very, very dirty so I was trying to check in the mirrors but I couldn’t see anything behind.
“The end result that I should have taken a bit more margin and I was ahead of Sergio at the braking point and that’s it. It happens, I will learn from it and hopefully, it won’t happen again.”
Also for Leclerc, this weekend’s trip to Bahrain brings back mixed memories from 12 months ago, after seeing a near-certain victory taken away by a loss of engine power.
“It was a painful one obviously,” he admitted. “I had my first pole so that’s a very good memory and then unfortunately in the race, we had a technical problem that stopped us from winning.
“We were very competitive and in the past also Ferrari has always been competitive here so hopefully we can have a good weekend starting from tomorrow.”