Leo Tolstoy called patience and time the two most powerful warriors. Ferrari took it too real and transformed a happy and fun-loving Tifosi into the most powerful warrior of all time. After a season sprinkled with good times, looking at this year’s start, the team has brought the pain back for Charles Leclerc, and only a few years more, and surely the hardcore fans will be fighting real battles as warriors.

The pain for Charles Leclerc and his fans is even worse than their failure to win last year. Firstly, their development steps in the wrong direction. And secondly, they have to keep looking back at the good times of the last year, thus reminding them again and again of what they could’ve achieved. With no solid hope in sight until next season, or at least until the next upgrade, the morale is unlikely to improve.

Looking back at his win in Australia in 2022 with over a 20-second gap to Sergio Perez in second, Charles Leclerc, during the pre-race conference, said, “Yeah, good memories. But already looking from for this year, we are not coming into this race in the same situation as we were last year. I think clearly our performance is not as good as last year, but we are working massively to try and come back at the front.”

“Last year, our good memories, as we can see on the images now, everybody was really happy, but again, we are fully motivated to be back in the front. We know where we need to work on. I don’t think there will be any miracles for this weekend, but after that, we’ve got three weeks break, and we’ll try to use it in the best way possible in order to bring upgrades as quickly as possible on the car.”

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The Monegasque driver spoke on behalf of all the Ferrari fans when he talked about the car and the good times. The pain was felt in the voice as only little hope could be seen in the future, but nothing on the weekend in the land down under.

Charles Leclerc spots the silver lining amid the darkness

With the development and promise that the RB19 has displayed in its runs so far, Max Verstappen and Red Bull will continue to be the favorites for the weekends to come. However, there’s a section where Charles Leclerc and Ferrari posed a fair challenge, and they know this strength.

Talking about their strength, i.e., qualifying, Leclerc said, “I think that in qualifying we’ve been quite good since the beginning of the season. Where we need to focus on is race where our car is extremely picky. When all the conditions are right, we seem to be able to extract the performance out of our package,” while hoping for a close battle during Saturday’s session.

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Qualifying performances give Leclerc a boost of confidence. But will even a pole on Saturday be sufficient for them? We don’t think so.