Charles Leclerc has stated that podium finishes are ‘not enough’ to keep him satisfied in 2024 following a winless season last year. The Ferrari star even claimed that he is looking for beyond ‘two or three’ Grand Prix victories as he prepares for the arrival of Lewis Hamilton in 2025.
This will be Leclerc’s final season with Carlos Sainz as a team-mate after a successful three years together. Unfortunately for the Monegasque driver, two of those three seasons have ended without a victory with his Spanish colleague claiming Ferrari’s only race win of the 2023 season in Singapore.
This has been a major source of frustration for Leclerc who proved his credentials as a title contender during his short-lived fight with Max Verstappen at the beginning of the 2022 campaign. Since then, however, victories have been hard to come by and six podium finishes and five pole positions were of little consolation to the 26-year-old last year.
Addressing his aims for the upcoming season, Leclerc said: “No, it’s not enough [to finish on the podium]. I mean, I want to win as many races as possible, then we’ll do the counter at the end of the year, and to also understand where we will be after the first race to understand how competitive we are.
“But yeah, it’s very difficult now to also draw a picture of where we will stand after the first race, it will depend on that as well. But two or three victories is not my target, I want to win as many races as possible.”
Despite getting his first taste of the team’s 2024 challenger, the SF-24, at the team’s shakedown event, Leclerc has made it clear that it is too early to tell whether or not Ferrari have taken a step forward in terms of performance this season.
“Looking back at the previous years, you always need to wait two or three races to feel how strong of a package you have on different tracks,” he explained. “Sometimes you can have a very strong package on one track and you get to another track and you are struggling much more.
“We will always have to wait two or three races to see our car in different conditions, different wind, different temperature, different track layout, before actually drawing conclusions of what can be achieved that season. But of course, we will have a good picture of where we are at after the first race.”
