Charles Leclerc has accepted he needed to be “better” to have stood a chance of beating Ferrari Formula 1 team-mate Carlos Sainz to victory in the Australian Grand Prix.
Ferrari capitalised on Max Verstappen encountering a stuck rear right brake that led to his retirement to land a first 1-2 finish since the 2022 season-opener in Bahrain.
Leclerc had been the pacesetting Ferrari through practice and topped the second and third sessions, but struggled with his car balance thereafter and qualified in fifth.
That placed Leclerc behind Lando Norris and enabled Sainz to build a controlling gap as a pit stop on Lap 9 to undercut the McLaren compromised Leclerc’s prospects.
However, Leclerc concedes that Sainz earned the right to be the Ferrari driver that prevailed as he secured vital grid position when he maximised the SF-24 over one lap.
Asked if there was more he could have done to beat Sainz, Leclerc said: “Just being better. I think in qualifying yesterday, I haven’t been good enough.
“In the second stint today, on the first Hard stint, I had quite a bit of graining on the front left after the Safety Car. The last stint was really good, but it wasn’t enough.”
Ferrari has elected to sign Lewis Hamilton to replace Sainz for next season, but Leclerc credited the Spaniard
“Carlos has just been better this weekend,” he added. “But it’s been like that in the last three years, where we basically will arrive at one race and Carlos will be better.
“And then I’ll push and then I’ll be better at the next race. And then we’ll improve like that. And that’s very exciting as a driver to have such a fast team-mate.
“And he’s really been on it since the beginning of the weekend. So congratulations to Carlos.”
Leclerc believes Ferrari’s record-extending 14th success in Australia has provided confirmation of the immense progress the Italian marque has made in recent times.
However, the Monegasque, who’s been winless since July 2022, admits that Red Bull remains the benchmark that Ferrari must strive to match under equal conditions.
“It’s extremely important because it’s been a long time since we have had the genuine pace to have Red Bull under control because we don’t know what was the real pace of Max today,” he assessed.
“But I will say that from FP1, we knew that pole position and the race win was possible because we had very good tyre degradation, very good pace. And that is a very encouraging sign.
“However, if you look at the first three races, two out of the first three races, they had the upper hand in the race. So we still have a lot of work to do.
“But that’s exactly what we need to do as a team is whenever we have the opportunity to actually win a race, we need to take it. And this weekend we did it. Carlos did it today on my side, second with the fastest lap. “So there are not any points that we have got more.
“And looking back at the first three races, there are not one race where we didn’t maximize the result.
“So we need to do that until we get the car that is consistently better than the Red Bull, especially in the race.”
