Charles Leclerc On Ferrari - "Car Is Better Than 2022"

The Ferrari driver claims the SF-23 is better than last year.

Charles Leclerc is optimistic for the upcoming 2023 season, saying the Ferrari SF-23 is "better than 2022".

The Monegasque had the fourth fastest time on the first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain yesterday, however, the teams are there to test various different aspects of the cars and it is not necessarily about lap times. 

Speaking the first day of testing, the Ferrari driver explained:

"The car is better than 2022. Let's see next week when we will have everything at 100 per cent.

Leclerc was asked what he thought of Max Verstappen's performance after taking the Red Bull out for the whole of the first day and ended up with the fastest times in both the morning and afternoon sessions. Leclerc responded:

"For now we are really not focusing on that. We had very different programmes yesterday.

"We are happy with what we have done, we have no idea how much fuel they have in the car, no idea how much they are pushing their engine.

"There are so many questions so we are not focused on that, we are focused on ourselves.

"Let's see if we can manage to understand bit more in the next couple of days but for now, we are just focused on ourselves."

Leclerc continued:

"I think we are all happy because the data matched with what we had back at the factory which was a really important first thing for the first day.

"It is very important to focus on ourselves because no team will really show their full potential here, we don't know how much they have left to show.

"So we will try to get the best feeling out of these test days and be as ready as possible for next week."