Charles Leclerc is confident that Ferrari’s updates have delivered a step in the right direction as he booked a spot on the front row for Formula 1‘s Austrian Grand Prix.
Leclerc equalled his strongest qualifying result of the campaign at the Red Bull Ring as he registered the second fastest lap time to separate the two McLaren drivers.
The Monegasque had emerged as McLaren’s closest threat in Q2 and an improvement on his opening Q3 run saw him slot in between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
But while he was unable to improve on his last attempt as he dropped time in the third sector, Leclerc maintained second place as Piastri had to abandon his final lap.
With Ferrari’s pace having tended to be more competitive over a race distance than a single lap, Leclerc is bidding to capitalise on lining his SF-25 up at the sharp end.
“It’s nice; it’s been a long time,” Leclerc told media including Motorsport Week.
“And I think this year overall, generally, we’ve been quite weak in qualifying. And then strong in the race.
“But it’s good to be at least this time, starting from the front row. At least we have a little bit less road to make before fighting with the guys in front.
“However, obviously, the gap is pretty big to Lando’s lap, which must have been very special for sure.
“I don’t know if we’ve got the tools to fight for a victory tomorrow.
“However, as I said, we are normally very strong on Sunday compared to the qualifying pace. And this gives me hope.”
Ferrari has made progress with Austria upgrades
Ferrari’s upturn, which also contained Lewis Hamilton backing Leclerc up in fourth, coincided with the team introducing new parts that included a revised floor design.
Asked what improvement the upgrades have provided, Leclerc replied: “Well, enough to be P2 because it’s very tight around here, if you again take off Lando.
“But yeah, so it definitely helped us. I felt like there were some steps forward.
“How much we need to see it in different characteristics of tracks. It’s not only on this track that we’ve got to judge that, but over multiple tracks.
“However, the numbers that we expected, we had them, which is a good start. And that means that we are working in the right direction. But yeah, still a long way to go.”
Ferrari still missing time to McLaren
But with Norris more than five tenths ahead across a sub-64-second lap, Leclerc has recognised that Ferrari still has substantial ground to make up to catch McLaren.
“I think we are losing mostly on the high speed this weekend, which was expected,” he highlighted.
“We expected to lose a little bit compared to McLaren in the high speed, but probably we expected to lose even more in the low speed, which was a little bit less the case.
“Obviously, we’ve brought an upgrade, and we are still in the learning process of understanding exactly what it does to the car. However, it seems to be working as expected.”
READ MORE – Lando Norris dominates qualifying to take F1 Austrian GP pole
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