The Abu Dhabi momentum that can propel Leclerc and Ferrari to F1 2023 success

“Where is P2?”

It was about the only thing that Charles Leclerc got wrong last Sunday in Abu Dhabi – missing where to park next to Max Verstappen in the smoky pitstraight parc ferme after their celebratory burnouts. Having headed briefly towards the third-place finisher’s spot, he squeezed his Ferrari F1-75 around the Red Bull and ended up where he should have been.

The same goes for the final result of Formula 1 2022.

In beating Sergio Perez to second in the season finale with a flawless drive in circumstances that his Ferrari team have historically struggled with, Leclerc also sealed the world championship runner-up spot behind Verstappen. That was his target throughout the season run-in, as was working with Ferrari to start addressing the issues that blighted the middle part of their campaign and ultimately lost them the championship.

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The good news is, based on what F1 witnessed last weekend and at several other races since August’s Belgian GP, where Leclerc now acknowledges he knew the 2022 title was lost, the Scuderia is making positive progress on its tyre management and strategy issues. The events of the previous weekend in Brazil, however, prove that the work is not yet done. 

Leclerc wasn’t gushing with delight at either his Abu Dhabi or championship result when he crossed the line 1.3 seconds ahead of Perez at Yas Marina last Sunday. Nor when he faced the media in the hours afterwards. And that’s good. No driver on the cusp of championship glory can be satisfied with second place.

PLUS: The factors that stopped Perez catching Leclerc in Verstappen's Abu Dhabi triumph

Autosport has seen this before. Back in October 2017, in the Jerez feature race, Leclerc sealed the first rookie title in GP2/Formula 2 in eight years with an exciting drive to overcome a late safety car period eroding his lead on worn tyres  – with three races still to go. To ensure he’d start that first Jerez race from pole, he and his Prema Racing squad had given themselves an extra one-lap practice on the medium tyres he’d have to use in the sprint race, which meant he’d start that event knowing a rare stop in the shorter race was on.

Leclerc showed his champions' class and determination to improve in his response to a disappointing Jerez F2 sprint race in 2017

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro/Motorsport Images

It was the same audacious strategy with which Leclerc had kickstarted his dominant F1 support category campaign six months earlier in Bahrain. But this time it caught up with him in the sprint race. And Leclerc was clearly disheartened by ending it seventh between Nyck de Vries and Alex Palou – despite sealing the championship 24 hours earlier and with a path to F1 set out before him.

But that’s just how true champions react. Their steely inner drive won’t let them accept what is, to them, beneath them. And five years on, the same is true for Leclerc. He knows he has the speed to be a world champion, with the most poles of all this season as further proof, and that he can battle Verstappen wheel-to-wheel and prevail. But it clearly hurts that it didn’t come off this time.

Looking back on the season, it’s remarkable to note that Leclerc ended up with just three wins. By rights, his total should have been double that, with victories clearly lost in Spain, Monaco and Britain through no fault of his own. The French GP failure was due to his own error but the win against a rapid Verstappen was on. And there’s a case to be made for Hungary and Singapore being there for the taking too. Nine wins to match his pole total would have left the history books reflecting more of the promise this campaign contained.

"We really made some step forwards in terms of strategy and the way we have been taking decisions recently, in the last few races. Unfortunately, it was a bit more difficult to show it because the pace is not as good as the beginning of the season" Charles Leclerc

But even with three wins, that’s still an impressive turnaround for Ferrari considering the two awful years that preceded 2022. The red team deserves big credit for making good on its promise to get back into the title fight after the performance pain of losing its pre-2020 engine arrangement. Perhaps this is why, for Leclerc, the season just gone is “difficult to sum up”.

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“Considering how far we've come from last year,” he continues, “it's an amazing step forward. But obviously I cannot ignore the middle part of the season, which was super-frustrating.

“We went from leading the championship by quite a few points to being behind by quite a lot of points. And that was a frustrating part of the season. We just need to take all the mistakes that we've made this year and try to improve for next year.

“I think we really made some step forward in terms of strategy and the way we have been taking decisions recently, in the last few races. Unfortunately, it was a bit more difficult to show it because the pace is not as good as at the beginning of the season. But I'm confident that in terms of pace, we will manage to catch Red Bull back up next year.”

Leclerc nailed the one-stop strategy to beat Perez in Abu Dhabi and secure the runner-up spot in the standings

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

For both Leclerc and Ferrari, the Abu Dhabi weekend surely provided a momentum springboard into next year. Because the team turned around what looked like being a very tricky race based on its FP2 showing, where Ferrari was 0.6s slower on race pace average compared to Red Bull and was also behind Mercedes.

After making overnight adjustments, it validated its decision to move to its smaller rear wing in FP3. And from there its drivers altered their driving styles to improve race-stint tyre life. For Leclerc, this meant avoiding wheel-slips and minimising the oversteer slides he can tame so well but the Pirellis hate, plus taking it as easy as possible through the long-but-rapid Turn 3 right-hander.

As Carlos Sainz ended up on the attacking two-stopper, it was left to Leclerc to demonstrate Ferrari’s tyre management progress, which he did with aplomb. Plus, he didn’t buckle under the late pressure from Perez.

PLUS: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Driver Ratings

The main problem for Ferrari and Leclerc is that Verstappen still dominated the race to win by 8.8s from pole on the same strategy. But the Dutchman possesses the best car of 2022, which continued to be fettled and improved around the floor and rear-end bodywork – key parts of the RB18’s tyre preservation prowess.

The car was overseen by Adrian Newey, who, one senior F1 paddock figure suggested last weekend to Autosport, knew not to be seduced by chasing big possible downforce gains from running a ground-effects car super low and very stiff. That aided his team in understanding and avoiding porpoising and related handling problems this year.

Now, Ferrari and Mercedes too have a chance to redesign their challengers with this in mind and can focus on reeling Red Bull in.

Verstappen was still comfortably out of Leclerc's reach in Abu Dhabi, but he believes Red Bull's superior pace has masked clear progress from Ferrari in the strategy department

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Regarding rubber, Leclerc also acknowledges that Abu Dhabi “was a good race but we also sometimes have very bad races and we don't seem to have an understanding yet of how to have good tyre management all the time”.

This is an issue Ferrari didn't fully address from 2021 and is an area where it can make big gains over the course of a championship. Red Bull actually does get its sums and set-ups wrong on tyres at times – such as recently in Brazil – but these are rare anomalies and Ferrari should be striving to reach such consistency.

Leclerc knows now to sometimes take a step back and perhaps not push too hard and risk going over the edge, as he did at Paul Ricard

Leclerc is also targeting improvements in his own game for 2023, saying “it's been quite a few years that I'm in F1 and it's more about getting the details [right] and being at my 100% as often as possible”. At the same time, he knows now to sometimes take a step back and perhaps not push too hard and risk going over the edge, as he did at Paul Ricard.

If Leclerc can do all this, armed with an improved Ferrari package, he will enter the class of championship-calibre drivers and fulfil the potential and determination he has shown for so long.

Can Leclerc and Ferrari put together the lessons learned from 2022 to mount a serious title challenge next year?

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images