Charles Leclerc believes that he made two "costly" mistakes in the 2022 F1 season. The Ferrari driver looked to be in contention for the championship early on in the campaign, having won two of the opening three races. However, Max Verstappen and Red Bull soon took the momentum as the Scuderia's challenge faltered, with the Italian team suffering strategic mishaps, driver errors and reliability woes. Leclerc has been open about occasions where he feels he has made a mistake, and acknowledges that these incidents caused damage.
Leclerc reflects on 'costly' mistakes
"I've always been very vocal about my mistakes," Leclerc told media, including RacingNews365.com . "There were two especially this year that were costly and where I lost points." Despite this, Leclerc overall takes a positive view on his season. "On the other hand, I'm happy with my season," the Monegasque added. "I think it's been a really good season. Last year, especially for the second part of the season, I had struggled a lot, [so] I changed a few things this year that made it better."
How Leclerc intends to address errors
With Verstappen and Red Bull having become increasingly dominant on their way to both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships in 2022, Leclerc thinks that he and Ferrari need to work on their mistakes in order to catch their rivals. "Max and Red Bull have been nearly faultless this season and they've done an incredible job," Leclerc explained. "They completely deserve to win the title. We haven't been clean enough in order to challenge them. "The performance was probably there, but [there were] too many mistakes, reliability [issues], strategy [errors], also my mistakes cost some points, and on that we need to get better. Max has done a good job." Leclerc hopes that he can continue to take lessons from his errors. "Learning from mistakes I think is the main thing," he continued. "But I also believe that whenever you are into the rhythm of good races, then that helps. "We had a moment of our season where we struggled a lot, and that then pushed people to maybe overdo things and then that's where mistakes occur, so on that I feel like we've learnt the lesson, and hopefully we won't do that [mistake] next year."
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