Impossible to look at positives after Bahrain – Leclerc

Charles Leclerc decried Ferrari’s start to the 2023 Formula 1 season after he retired from the Bahrain Grand Prix due to a suspected engine failure.

Leclerc held second during the early stages in Bahrain but was unable to challenge Max Verstappen and instead dropped to third, behind the sister Red Bull of Sergio Perez.

Leclerc was on course for a distant podium position until a sudden engine failure halted his race.

“I cannot say it feels good,” said Leclerc. “Obviously there was quite a lot of work on that [reliability] but we need to keep working as it’s the first race and first reliability problem, yeah, not good.”

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Leclerc continued that he is “as confident as I can be being second off the pace which is not really confident to be honest.

“Red Bull seems to have found something really big during the race pace… in terms of quali pace they are actually pretty similar to us so at least we managed to extract the lap time yesterday.

“But then we come to the race and we are a second a lap off the pace which is huge, so we need to work on that and the reliability.”

Leclerc was asked about the lack of race pace and merely responded: “Performance. We are just not quick enough.

“It’s impossible to look at the positives on a day like this when you don’t end the race. The choice was good in qualifying, the start was good, but the performance was not there and [in terms of] reliability we have a problem in the first race.”