LM10 wrote: ↑21 Oct 2024, 22:25
True, 2017 and 2018 were pretty good seasons too (still a very big fan of the SF70H, as a side note… what a beast that was
). However, there still was something missing compared to now. The team has not felt so complete in ages. Not only the car, but all the other parts of the team are functioning - upgrades work, strategies make sense, drivers make much less mistakes, Leclerc’s finally gotten a race engineer who knows what to do other than saying “copy” and “we’re checking”, the working environment seems to be nice, the mindset is the right one etc. The team is slowly tuning into a well oiled machine.
I am very appreciative of Bozzi (Leclerc's race engineer) nowadays... I never had a large issue with Xavi but now that we have Bryan, I realize Leclerc was settling for second best for way too long.
Yes, there are still communication issues sometimes and Bozzi hasn't been perfect, but him and Leclerc get along well and Leclerc is more casual with him than he was with Xavi. Leclerc also gets frustrated quite easily (as many F1 drivers do) but he seems to respond well to Bozzi's encouraging comments and reassurance. Xavi would often just let him rage which was not always productive.
It really does feel like we're undergoing a butterfly transformation with Ferrari right now.
I hope people remember this happiness and optimism when a bad race inevitably happens, and don't immediately rush to bashing the team.