F1 News: Charles Leclerc admits Ferrari's 2022 failures were "hard to accept"
Charles Leclerc has spoken honestly about Ferrari's failures and setbacks this year, admitting that the team did not maximise its package.
Although Red Bull won the constructors' standings with a significant margin to Ferrari in second, this does not tell the whole story of the 2022 F1 season.
Ferrari's F1-75 proved an extremely fast machine - especially in the first half of the season - and seemed capable of fighting for the championship.
Two wins in the first three races only fueled the optimism surrounding Ferrari, especially as Red Bull struggled with reliability and Mercedes with performance.
Unfortunately for the Maranello squad, what followed was a variety of reliability, strategic and operational errors that gave Red Bull the upper hand in development.
For the points that Red Bull gained on pure pace (Imola, Miami), there were many more that Ferrari would hand to them on a plate (Spain, Baku, Monaco).
Speaking in an interview with AMuS, Charles Leclerc discussed the team's shortcomings in 2022:
"The frustrating part came when we got an upgrade and had the fastest car.
"The new parts in Barcelona really pushed us forward. We made too little out of it.
"The engine broke down in Barcelona, in Monaco we made a mistake in strategy, the next engine failure came in Baku, then the engine penalty in Canada...
"The pace was there to win races, but we didn't deliver. That was hard to accept."
Having sacrificed much of the 2021 season to focus on development for the 2022 regulation changes, many expected Ferrari to fight for the title.
Unfortunately for the Scuderia, multiple deficiencies within the team were exposed - as the world watched F1's juggernaut fail to deliver yet again.
Mattia Binotto's departure was somewhat inevitable after Ferrari's failed 2022 campaign, but the team will need further introspection if they are to succeed.
Binotto certainly bears some responsibility for the Italian squad's failures, given that he could not address the prevalent issues within the team after several seasons.
However, more fundamental changes within the team seem mandatory if Ferrari hopes to restore its former glory.