Jock Clear, a senior performance engineer at Ferrari and currently coaching Charles Leclerc, believes that Carlos Sainz’s victory at the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix “hurt” Leclerc. Red Bull dominated the previous season, winning 21 out of the 22 races. Ferrari driver Sainz became the only driver to prevent Red Bull from achieving a clean sweep of race wins with his triumph in the Singapore GP held in September.
Speaking about Sainz and Leclerc on the F1 Nation Podcast, Clear stated: “We’ve been talking about Carlos’s qualities for a long time. The truth is, Carlos probably doesn’t possess the same speed advantage in qualifying that Charles can show.”
“But when you look at last year’s Singapore, you can see that that victory really affected Charles. We thought Charles was the favorite to win the Singapore Grand Prix. He usually went there with a lot of confidence, and Carlos winning that race really hurt Charles. Still, I think things like this make him more focused and motivate him to put in more effort for his performance on Sunday.”
