Leclerc sets target for the rest of the season

Ahead of this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has revealed Ferrari's targets for the rest of the current season, claiming that the Scuderia is eager to clinch second place in the teams' championship.

Ferrari had enjoyed great success and a resurgance in the second half of last season, with both Charles Leclerc and former Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz claiming victories.

Based on this fine form, Ferrari had been expected to mount a challenge in both the drivers' and teams' championship. However, the Italian team failed to meet these expectations, falling back behind McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes in the pecking order.

As a result of a development push in recent months, Ferrari managed to turn things around, and although victories currently look impossible due to McLaren's dominant performance, the Scuderia have at least moved themselves up into second place in the pecking order.

Asked about Ferrari's targets for the rest of the season and whether the Scuderia might hold its performance back to gain more development time in the wind tunnel, Leclerc denied that the Italian team would deliberately want to fall back in the teams' standing.

"I'm pretty sure it's better to finish second than third. However, as you said, there's also the wind tunnel time. This is not something we think of too much.

"When we are on track, we just want to finish as high up as possible and then we'll deal with whatever amount of hours in the wind tunnel we have.

"We want to target the highest possible. Second place in the Constructors’ is one of our targets, but the biggest target is to come back to winning races as soon as possible. Wherever we finish, we'll work from there and see how many hours we have next year.

Pressed on to reveal whether he thinks there will be race tracks where Ferrari can challenge the field-leading McLaren for pole positions or race victories, Leclerc sounded a rather pessimistic note.

"I'm not sure. I don't think there's one track at the moment where we think we are stronger than McLaren. Consistently, McLaren is going to be the strongest car this year.

"Red Bull is a little bit more up and down, a bit like us and Mercedes, but there's one constant and that is McLaren. For now, I don't think there's any tracks where I go to and think we will be the favourite, but I hope I'll be surprised.