Charles Leclerc was painfully confronted with the facts in an interview with the French Canal Plus. Max Verstappen has achieved more victories in two seasons than Ferrari in a ten-year period. The Monegask could still smile, although he admitted that it was not fun to compare the team from Maranello with the statistics of the two-time world champion.
After a number of difficult seasons, Ferrari seemed to be recovering. After all, the 2022 season started promisingly for the team from Italy, but unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth at the end of the season. However, Leclerc was the Ferrari driver who has stood on the top step of the podium most often, winning the races in Bahrain, Australia and Austria. In any case, the 25-year-old couldn’t match Verstappen in the RB18. The Dutchman won fifteen races in the 2022 season alone.
Leclerc was asked by Canal Plus if he was aware of how many victories Verstappen has been able to achieve in the past two years. “No, but I don’t need to know!” says the Monegask, who can laugh a bit about it. The Dutchman has put the champagne bottle of victory to his mouth no less than 25 times in the past two seasons. Leclerc also did not know how many victories Ferrari has achieved in the past ten years. ‘No, but that will undoubtedly be confrontational.’ And that’s right, because that number stands at 23.
‘Painful to compare ourselves to Red Bull’
Leclerc was hopeful that Ferrari would manage to achieve more victories in the 2023 season. In Bahrain it was clear that the Scuderia still has some work to do. “We were not surprised that this happened after the test days,” said the Ferrari driver. Leclerc retired in the first race of the season, so the tables seemed to have turned from the previous season, in which Red Bull retired in the first race. “It was painful to compare ourselves to Red Bull.”
