Charles Leclerc took “plenty” of positives from Ferrari’s performance despite a disappointing retirement at the Spanish Grand Prix.
An early mistake from Max Verstappen gave the Monegasque a comfortable lead from pole position during the first half of the race in Barcelona.
However, Leclerc’s victory hopes ended when his car lost power, leaving him to crawl back to his garage.
“It’s a shame,” the 24-year-old admitted to Sky Sports. “In those moments I believe that there’s nothing else I can do apart from looking at the positives, and there are plenty this weekend.
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“There’s the qualifying pace, the race pace and most importantly the tyre management.
“That has been a weakness in the last few races, I think we definitely found something this weekend on that. So it gives me the confidence for the rest of the season.”
On Monday, Ferrari confirmed a turbo and MGU-H failure was to blame for Leclerc’s “sudden” retirement and that both parts were now out of his allocation for the season.
However, there were some reassurances from the conclusion that the problem was not the result of a design fault and that there was no concern about the reliability of other parts.
Even so, Charles admits the Scuderia must do all it again to avoid such setbacks going forward.
“Overall, it’s always a disappointment,” he added. “Obviously, once you’re fighting for a championship, you know that every point is very valuable.
“But over the course of a season, I think it [a retirement] always more or less happens. Which is not an excuse for sure, and I’m pretty sure that everyone is already working flat out to understand all of it and to fix it as quickly as possible.
“We cannot afford for this to happen too many times during the season.”
To make matters slightly worse, Verstappen would recover from his early trip through the gravel at Turn 4 to claim victory in Spain, meaning he now has the lead in the championship for the first time in 2022.
“That’s fine,” said Leclerc. “I’m not looking at it.
“I think what is the most important is the overall performance and, performance-wise, we are performing very well.
“So I can’t wait to go home next week and hopefully we’ll have a great result.”