Charles Leclerc can “squeeze the maximum” from the 2020 Ferrari, while on my side “it’s a bit different”, Sebastian Vettel admits.
The four-time world champion has only finished ahead of his Monegasque teammate once this season when both drivers have finished, this as Vettel struggles to cope with the rear-end instability of the SF1000.
Such has been the German’s lack of performance, his last Q3 came back at the British Grand Prix in August, while Seb has only scored a single point since Spa.
On his problems this season, however, Vettel didn’t really have much of an answer.
“I think it’s a bit independent from Charles, I think he’s doing a very good job, he seems to squeeze the maximum out of the car,” he was quoted by Crash.net.
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“I think on my side it’s a bit different, I think it’s a very different year, very different circumstances going in and not really having the smoothest year in terms of being able to do what I can do.
“Not the easiest situation, but I’m willing to give everything that I can to try and improve and hopefully towards the end of the year, get back to where I know and where I can be.”
Speaking in the same press conference ahead of the Portuguese GP, Leclerc was asked if he had improved as a driver despite Ferrari’s problems.
“On my side, I’ve changed a little bit the approach,” he replied.
“Whether it made me go quicker, I don’t think so but surely, I’m giving my 100% at every session.
“Last year I was taking it a bit easier from FP1 to FP3 and then push in qualifying. But then I had some consistency problems to always put the lap together in qualifying.
“This year I’m just trying to give my best from FP1 to the race basically and yeah, I found some positives in that. As a driver, I keep improving, but I guess it’s the same for every driver. So that’s it.”