Mercedes will be back in the Formula 1 title race next year, Charles Leclerc has predicted.
For the Silver Arrows, 2022 was for the most part very much a year to forget. They did eventually manage a victory, in Brazil, and a handful of podiums elsewhere. But by their own standards it was a particularly lean campaign in which Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were forced to fight for scraps.
The Brits did an admirable job of it, maximising their points as much as they could to stay in touch with Ferrari as much as they could. The hope for them next year is that they will once again have a car in which they can fight for race wins on a much more regular basis.
That's exactly what Leclerc expects to happen. Instead of a straight shootout with defending champions Red Bull, the Ferrari star is gearing up for a three-way fight for both titles in 2023.
"I do believe that Mercedes will be in the fight," said the Monegasque, who finished second in the drivers' championship having won three races. "Another team? I haven't seen signs yet that another team will join the top three.
"But Mercedes will definitely be there next year with a very strong car. We've seen how much they've improved from the first race to the last race. I think they understood what they did wrong, and this is normally a sign that it will go better. So hopefully it will be a three-team fight next year."
Despite the performance gap between the cars of Ferrari and Mercedes, so costly were the Italians' problems that they only narrowly managed to hold on to second place in the constructors'. A barren run between their win in Austria and the end of the season allowed the ever-improving Silver Arrows to close the gap.
Ferrari have changed their team principal in the wake of the title challenge which faltered and faded away so badly this year. That, and the learning his team has done, gives Leclerc confidence that they will be able to have a much better crack at it next season.
He added: "We've been working extremely hard in the past year to try and understand what were the weaknesses of this car in order to get better for next year's car... we have been working in the right direction and in the right way. This gives me the confidence that we'll have a competitive car for 2023."
