Charles Leclerc wants Max Verstappen to keep up his aggressive moves against Lando Norris as it will help his championship chances.
Verstappen was penalised twice in yesterday’s race for his strong-arm moves on the McLaren driver. Leclerc passed the pair of them during the second, when Verstappen dived down the inside of Norris at turn seven, failed to make the apex and took both off the track.Although Norris passed Leclerc before the end of the race, the Ferrari driver finished ahead of Verstappen, and took points off the championship leader for the fourth time in the last five races. Leclerc is 71 points off the championship lead with 120 available.
“I welcome Max being as aggressive to Lando as possible because it helps me, at least it gives me chances to be closer to Lando in the drivers’ championship because it’s still a fight,” he said. “If anything, it’s more a fight, Lando and myself than with Max, who has quite an advantage in points.”
Leclerc said he doesn’t “think about the drivers’ championship, realistically.”
“I think first the approach is not to start thinking about the drivers’ championship,” he explained. “That doesn’t help me achieve anything more. It’s by focusing race-by-race.
“And more than that, I just feel like it’s not in my control whether I win the drivers’ championship. Or there’s part of it that is in my control, and if I win all races, that puts most of the chances on my side. But even if I do that, I’ve got to have Max that has very poor weekends and I don’t rely on that, so I’ll just try and do the best possible end of the season, and then we’ll do the maths at the end of the season.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
He suspects Norris could have passed Carlos Sainz Jnr to win the race had he not lost so much time fighting Verstappen early on.
“I had no chance to stay in front of Lando. Lando was flying, and I think as a team, we’ve been pretty lucky that whatever happened with Max and Lando at the beginning of the race, that slowed him down massively. His second stint was very, very impressive.
“So that was a good thing for us, and that probably helped us. On my side, there was no way that I could stay in front.”
Leclerc lost second place when he lost control of his car at the final corner and nearly crashed. “I knew that it would be very difficult,” he said. “I knew that I had to have an incredible exit out of the last corner, so I tried to put everything to have a really good exit, went over the limit, lost the car and lost the position. But I felt it was a question of laps or corners before I lost that position.”
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories - and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2024 Mexican Grand Prix
- McLaren have no regrets over pitting Norris shortly before red flag came out
- Leclerc fined, avoids same penalty as Verstappen after apologising for swearing
- Leclerc not in the clear over swearing as Verstappen claims he went unpunished
- Majority of drivers wanted racing rules to change “straight away” – Russell
- Verstappen was “over the limit” with Norris but others would do same – Leclerc
MichaelN
28th October 2024, 9:18
Hard to know how much of this is after-the-race reasoning, but if Leclerc felt he couldn’t keep Norris at bay, his risky exit was perhaps not the wisest of moves. Better to take 13 points than 0. Still a cool move though, one that will definitely be in the season highlights.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
28th October 2024, 13:00
I bet he does! Max will sacrifice his race to keep Norris behind him, the more drastically this happens the more Leclercs slim chance at the title becomes a actual chance.
It’s going to need some DNFs but with how heated it’s getting that’s not hard to see occurring.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
28th October 2024, 16:05
Leclerc has lost every encounter with Max as Max has not given him any space so I understand he wants to win the WCC but I would be worrying about my own legacy if I were him.
He’s 27 years old, he has 26 poles and 8 wins which is a very disproportionate number of poles to wins. It’s his 6th season with Ferrari.
I’m sure he wants to be a WDC champion but that dream is probably further today than it was before he entered F1. If he’s in a fight with Verstappen and Max is leading in points, I’d say Leclerc’s odds of winning are less than <1% and I rate Charles highly but you cannot overtake off track and he'll be off track on every attempt.
MichaelN
28th October 2024, 17:14
Not quite, but overall he does need to step it up if he wants to compete for a title.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
28th October 2024, 17:54
yeah, I should have prefaced it with practically every encounter.
kuvemar
28th October 2024, 19:33
Pretty sure everyone understands that this means he’s an amazing qualifier rather than a poor racer.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
28th October 2024, 22:35
Actually, it means both because you can’t have 100 poles in what is essentially the fastest car over one lap and score 0 victories. That would mean you choke or can’t go the distance.
It’s actually really hard to find a driver with 1.5x more poles than race wins. Most drivers have more wins than poles as the list below shows. Very few drivers have more poles than wins, notably Clark and Senna who were known for just being insanely fast. Rosberg has more but that’s because Hamilton had more race pace in most circuits.
Senna is the only driver with a ratio of more than 1.5 – contrast that to Leclerc’s 3.2.
A ratio of 3 times the number of poles to wins is emblematic of one or more problems for Leclerc.
Leclerc 26 Poles/8 Wins
Here are the numbers of poles to wins for the top winning drivers:
Lewis Hamilton 104 Poles /105 Wins
Schumacher 68/91
Verstappen 40/61
Vettel 57/53
Prost 33/51
Senna 65/41
Alonso 22/32
Mansell 32/31
Stewart 17/27
Clark 33/25
Lauda 24/25
Fangio 29/24
Piquet 24/23
Rosberg 30/23
Damon Hill 20/22
Raikonnen 18/21
Hakkinen 26/20
Moss 16/16
Button 8/15
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
29th October 2024, 0:07
An interesting comment, I’m surprised, but yes, there’s no doubt that leclerc is both a very strong qualifier and just not as brilliant in races, I’m not saying he’s bad and he’s had some great races, but I think senna is indeed a good driver to compare him to: he was basically unbeatable in qualifying and then in the races he made mistakes and ended up winning less races than prost (though he also had a bit less races, but their ratio is similar).
What makes leclerc’s ratio worse is that there’s A LOT of races he got pole on that simply weren’t winnable with his equipment.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
29th October 2024, 0:07
Compared to the senna era, there’s drs, so defending from faster cars that you beat in quali is now harder.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
29th October 2024, 11:52
There was no parc ferme back then. The qualifying car was almost a different build than the race car.
Grapmg
29th October 2024, 7:07
Norris 7/3
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
29th October 2024, 11:51
Yeah, I was looking at the higher numbers. Bottas also 20/10 a la Rosberg.
Esteban
28th October 2024, 18:21
Leclerc has very rarely come on top against Verstappen, let’s see if this statement doesn’t come to bite him if he ever is in the actual fight for the championship with Max. Much like Norris and his stupid and disrespectful comments about Lewis and Mercedes.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
29th October 2024, 11:53
Yeah exactly. He should be worried about beating Verstappen if he has to. And Norris wishes he had addressed Verstappen’s driving in 2021.