Charles Leclerc says that Ferrari must “be better” going forward following a challenging day at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Leclerc was leading the race after overtaking Mercedes’ George Russell on lap 31 of the race following the opening pit stops.
At his second stop, Ferrari switched Leclerc to the Hard compound after the Monegasque driver ran the Medium tyre during his first two stints of the race.
Leclerc struggled for pace after moving to the white-walled compound and lost the lead to Max Verstappen, before losing another position to George Russell.
Ferrari opted to pit Leclerc later in the grand prix for a third time and give him the Soft tyre, with the 24-year-old emerging in sixth place, where he took the chequered flag.
“Obviously, a race like this is frustrating,” he said. “And need to get better as a whole. You know, it always feels like there’s always something going on, whatever is, reliability, mistakes, whatever.
“But we need to be better putting a weekend together. And yeah, we will try and use the few days that we have to reset, but obviously also to analyse and to understand where we need to be better, and what we can do to get better, because this is extremely important.
“As a team, looking where we are coming from in the last few years, I do believe that it’s an incredible step forward.
“On the other hand, obviously there’s another step that we need to do. And we are working on that. But I’m confident that we will do it.”
Leclerc now sits a mammoth 80 points behind Red Bull’s Verstappen in the championship, after the reigning World Champion took his eighth win of 2022 in Budapest.
When asked if he is still in the title fight, Leclerc answered: “Before thinking about the championship, to be honest, I just want to understand…
“As a team we need to understand what we need to do to get better, because otherwise it’s going to be really difficult.”