Leclerc points out bottleneck for Ferrari: 'We can't get that done'

Charles Leclerc points to Red Bull Racing as favourites for the Mexican Grand Prix. According to the Monegasque, the safe of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez still has the best papers on Sunday and Ferrari will have to work hard to turn that around.

Tyre wear kills Leclerc

With Verstappen and Red Bull Racing having secured the drivers' and constructors' titles respectively, there is nothing more in store for Ferrari than second place. In the constructors, it needs to hold off Mercedes to do so, while Leclerc hopes to stay ahead of Perez for second place in the World Championship.

Ahead of his rival's home race, Leclerc also rates the competition a little higher. ''I still believe that Red Bull will be the team to beat on Sunday. They always seem to find something from the Saturday to the Sunday that we didn't quite find it yet. But we are getting there. I don't know whether this track will be better or worse. But anyway, I believe it will be close on Sunday,'' said the Ferrari driver at the press conference.

For Ferrari, the problem seems to be mainly in tyre wear on Sunday. Also in the United States, Leclerc struggled to keep up with Verstappen and even Lewis Hamilton over a longer period of time as his tyres broke down faster. Leclerc himself does not know exactly what that was due to.

Race space from Ferrari

''On my side, it's not like you change a lot from track to track, what you do with the tyre degradation. So I think there are races where we've approached it in the right way and we had the car in the right window, the tyres in the right window, but as we often speak, it is a very fine line with not getting the right window, the tyres and then it has a big consequence on your race and that we just need to get to get better as a team in order to always be in that in that window where everything works.''

So Ferrari now seems to be getting a setup together that is fast over one lap, but with that setup, it is asking a lot of the tyres. As a result, it does not seem ideal for races. In any case, the team has not yet found a better compromise with the F1-75 in 2022.