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Leclerc fears Norris and Verstappen revival: 'Makes our life difficult'
Charles Leclerc fears a revival from Max Verstappen and Lando Norris during the upcoming Singapore Grand Prix weekend. After a period of success for Ferrari, which saw Leclerc win in Monza and get a second place in Baku, the man from Monaco expects his life to be a bit harder in the coming months.
Last season, Red Bull Racing won 21 out of the 22 Grands Prix. The only venue they failed to find success at was Singapore. Ferrari took advantage of the situation, as Carlos Sainz won the race. Leclerc is expecting another strong Ferrari race in Singapore.
"We need to make sure that we maximise the team's points here. And then after that, again, the worst thing we can do at this moment of the season is to have wrong expectations going forward. We have gone through some very specific tracks since Monza which makes us look particularly good. I hope that the pictures remain the same after this race," Leclerc said in Singapore on Thursday evening.
Leclerc anticipates Norris and Verstappen will return to form
"However, personally, I will probably expect McLaren and Red Bull to get back to their normal level of performance. That will make our life a little bit more difficult. On our side, we need to be good at having the right expectations going into the weekend because otherwise it can push you to try and find performance that is not in our car for the moment. But we are working well and I think the development is going well," he added.
In recent weeks, most of the attention has been on Norris. He has been closing the gap on Verstappen, which now stands at 59 points. It's a gap that could've been much smaller as the Brit hasn't maximised recent race weekends. So much so that Leclerc is starting to close in. He is 78 points shy of Verstappen's total, but he admits he needs a bit of luck to bridge that gap with just seven race weekends remaining.
"For Max, I think there needs to be a little bit of luck involved on our side, because even if we do really well until the end of the season, I think it's going to be very difficult to go in and take the driver's title. But I don't really think about it for now. I just try and focus race by race," he added.
This article has been created in collaboration with Ludo van Denderen
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