Charles Leclerc: Staying with Ferrari “interesting challenge to develop the car"

F1 News

14 December 2019 at 15:26
  • Bevan Youl

Charles Leclerc has said that staying with Ferrari for another season will be an “interesting challenge to develop the car” for 2020 having previously switched from team to team in the past few years.

Leclerc hasn’t been part of one team for more than a season, moving up from Formula Renault 2.0 in 2014, through European F3, GP3, Formula 2 to Formula 1 last year with Sauber before switching to Ferrari for 2019.
 
“It’s the first time in my single-seater career where I stay in the same team from one year to another,” said Leclerc as quoted by F1's official site.

“Which also should be an interesting challenge to develop the car.

“Overall, we progressed quite a lot [in 2019], which I think is the most important, and now I'm really looking forward to keeping this momentum for next year.”

Reflecting on the 2019 season the Monegasque admitted to it being strange in terms of performance up and downs but was happy with Ferrari’s development.

“It's been a bit of a weird season,” he added. “We started off definitely not where we thought we would start after the winter testing.

"Winter testing was very positive, then we arrived at the first race and we have been struggling quite a lot.

“But then after that, I think the progression was very good. Austin has been a little bit weird too. We still don't really understand why we were so off the pace.

“But overall I think it has been a positive season – apart from the first race [in Melbourne] that has been very negative.”