Charles Leclerc feels Ferrari are third fastest after opening Formula 1 pre-season test at Bahrain but can’t comment on “exactly where we stand”.
The Maranello-based team has a lot of expectations riding on its shoulders heading into the 2026 season.
The duo of Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton enter into the second year of their highly-rated partnership after a disappointing debut season in 2025.
But the clean slate the 2026 regulations reset has provided the Italian marque, at least on the power unit side of things, could push the tide in its favor.
Ferrari debuted the SF-26 against its rivals in January, at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya before heading to Bahrain for the opening pre-season test earlier this week.
Leclerc topped the second day’s overall lap charts. But the Monegasque isn’t falling for testing times especially given how suspicious he is of the other teams sandbagging at the moment.
“I think everybody is trying to throw the ball to the other guys. It’s normal at that point of the season,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“Also because it’s so difficult to understand. It was difficult with the previous generation of cars, but now with the hybrid and especially the electric engine being so much more powerful, there are so many small tweaks that you can do.
“You can hide the real potential of the car in many different ways now, so it’s very difficult for us to understand exactly where we stand.
“What I’m happy of is that we are going through our programme. We didn’t have any reliability issues so far and this is a good start.
“Everything stacks up with what we expected. So that’s a good base to then start to work on and to improve.”
Mercedes and Red Bull expected to lead Ferrari in 2026
The winter break was fueled with rumors of Mercedes nailing the power unit regulations albeit with an allegedly illegal compression ratio trick.
On the other hand, while not directly in the limelight, Red Bull has shown some promise during the two testing events run so far.
Leclerc is of the strong opinion that heading into the season-opener at Australia, in March, this duo would be leading Ferrari – but the margins, he warns, will be slim.
“I think Red Bull have shown very impressive things power unit-wise since the start of the test, especially here,” he added.
“Mercedes are showing some very impressive things as well sometimes, but I would say they are hiding a lot more.
“I would expect them to especially to be a bit ahead of us.”
As far as the 2025 Constructors’ Champions McLaren are concerned, Leclerc admitted to have been stumped as to the MCL40’s true competitive potential. Irrespective, he refused to count the Woking-based team out of contention completely.
“The McLaren is a little bit more difficult to understand, but from where I stand now it’s Red Bull, Mercedes in front and then us,” Leclerc concluded. “But it doesn’t seem to be too much of a gap for now.”
READ MORE – Charles Leclerc embraces F1’s biggest rechnical reset as Ferrari goes all-in
Discussion about this post