Leclerc: I knew I couldn’t take too many risks

After the finish of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc commented on the key points, including explaining his tactics in the closing laps.

Question: In Abu Dhabi you were on the podium for the sixth time this season. Did the race go as you expected?
Charles Leclerc: In general, yes, more or less. It turned out that we were even more competitive than we expected. I think we expected to be slightly behind Mercedes or McLaren, but otherwise everything went according to our predictions. I want to say that Max, as always, was faster, but we managed to find the right approach to the tires. We assumed we would have problems with overheating – usually this is one of our weak points. But today we have done a good job in this regard.

Q: Tell us how you fought Max in the first round…
Charles Leclerc: Yes, it was amazing! Of course, I was mainly thinking about the Constructors’ Championship and understood that I couldn’t take too much risk. But I saw an opportunity to attack when I saw Max looking in the mirrors and made him think I was moving to the right, then I moved to the left.

Then I made another attack in Turn 9, but I understood that it was important to take good care of the tires because if you attack too aggressively on the first lap there could be very serious consequences that would affect the entire distance. So at some point I decided to gain a foothold in second place. Anyway, even if we reached first place, I don’t think we could hold it for long.

Q: You talk about positive aspects – that you managed to solve the tire wear problem, that the pace was better than you expected. Does this give you confidence for the new season?
Charles Leclerc: It depends which way you look at it. Of course it is good that we ended the season well. This gives us confidence that next year we will hopefully have a more correct approach to tuning the car and choosing directions for its further modernization.

On the other hand, we are still far from the level of speed that Red Bull is capable of. First of all, I’m talking about pace over the race distance. Everyone on our team is acutely aware that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Question: The battle for 2nd place in the Constructors’ Championship continued all the way to the checkered flag. Tell us what it was like, because you even had to finish third, and in the end you were probably upset… Do you think Ferrari is the third fastest car in the championship?
Charles Leclerc: So much happened this year, and it all depended on the specific track. The situations were very different, in some races our car was certainly second fastest, but in other cases maybe only fourth or fifth. But I believe that after the leg in Japan, where the SF-23 received technical updates, everything went in the right direction.

First of all I’m talking about my flying style. I always prefer the front wheels of the car to stay firmly on the track so I felt much more comfortable and could perform more consistently. So this is a very positive thing.

But of course I’m very angry that we finished the season in third place in the Constructors’ Championship. Fighting for second place was my only goal in the last two or three races, and in Abu Dhabi that continued until the very last lap. I tried to give Sergio Perez the opportunity to use DRS to give him more than a five second lead over George Russell, but that didn’t work.

Question: How did the car’s behavior change after you switched from medium to hard tires at the first pit stop? You weren’t so much behind Max at this stage of the race, but it seems like your pace got a bit worse in the second part of the distance…
Charles Leclerc: I think Max was actively trying to protect the Medium tires because two or three laps before his pit stop he started attacking, after which I immediately realized: Red Bull apparently had a much greater reserve of speed than I expected.

When we then switched to hard tyres, my main task was to close the gap to George Russell’s Mercedes, who was behind me. I understood that we couldn’t compete with Max, so I didn’t want to use up a significant part of the tire life at the start of the second segment, with the intention of attacking later.

Moreover, at that point I had not yet given up the idea of ​​covering the distance in a single pit stop and assumed that I had to reach the finish line. Perhaps we were not able to calculate everything correctly, which meant we had to make another pit stop. This is another reason why it seemed like our pace wasn’t that good.

Q: Another question about your tactics on the last lap, when you lost the position to Perez: at what point did you think this maneuver could give you a chance to move ahead of Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship?
Charles Leclerc: Just a few laps before I heard that Sergio had been given a 5 second time penalty. I kept asking the team for information about the interval between George’s and Sergio’s cars. Then I was told that Sergio had overtaken George and I knew he was behind me and if I let him use DRS behind my car he could gain as much distance as possible from George.

There was an active discussion between me and my engineer on this topic and I explained how I would proceed, but my plan did not work.