Leclerc staying cautious on Ferrari end-of-season prospects despite improvements

Charles Leclerc says Ferrari is unlikely to finish second in Formula 1's the constructors’ championship despite his back-to-back podiums in Austin and Mexico City.

Ferrari has moved back into second place – one point ahead of Mercedes and 10 ahead of Red Bull - following Leclerc’s runner-up finish to Lando Norris in Mexico City. A week earlier, Leclerc finished third behind Max Verstappen and Norris in the United States Grand Prix, but he says he is wary of the outright pace of some of Ferrari’s rivals.

“It's going to be very, very tough,” Leclerc said. “If I look back at the last two weekends, yes. If I look before these two weekends, not really.

“We just need to focus race by race and do the perfect execution just like we've done in the last two races. That pays off, obviously, as always – it's very difficult to be performing at this level all the time but that is the standard that we need to target, and hopefully that will be enough to give us second in the constructors.’”

While Leclerc is pessimistic when it comes to Ferrari’s hopes of beating Mercedes and Ferrari, he admits he was also surprised to be able to score podiums in each of the last two rounds.

“I think we did not expect to be replicating what we've done in Austin. We knew that in Austin we had done the perfect execution, but we also knew that on paper we maybe didn't have the pace that McLaren or Red Bull had. To be on the podium at that race was a surprise, but we managed to do that again and one step higher on the podium as well.

“As we know already, in terms of pure performance from the car, it's been quite a long time that we've been switching our minds to 2026, and so that [will hurt] us a little bit more into this last part of the season. But by doing perfect executed weekends, we managed to get two podiums in a row, which is a really nice feeling.”

Leclerc was also under significant pressure from Verstappen at the end of Sunday’s race, and the Ferrari driver believes it is likely he’d have been overtaken but for a late Virtual Safety Car period.

“I was very happy to see the [VSC] coming out in the last two laps. I think without it, there was more chance of Max getting past than me staying in front," he admitted. "Especially with those medium tires, the feeling was just not there from the beginning to the end.

“I was definitely tempted by the two stops, but I don't know. At the end, I just stuck to what I was on, which was the medium tire, and tried to make it work – and we did. It was close. We got a little bit lucky, but I'm proud we made it stick.”