Leclerc praises Ferrari's long-run pace, but fears from qualifying struggles
Having sat out the opening practice session in Austria, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has praised his SF-25's long-run pace, but the Monegasque was left to question whether he can fight for top places in qualifying.
Ferrari had an up-and-down opening day at the Austrian Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton only completed a total of 20 laps in the opening one-hour session as he was hindered by a gearbox issues.
His team-mate Charles Leclerc sat out the opening practice as he handed over his SF-25 to F2 driver Dino Beganovic. The Swedish driver racked up a total of 32 lap, ending up 18th. The Ferrari Academy driver got through his programme without any issues, running both the Hard and Soft compound tyres, and he took on more fuel to try the Soft tyre in race trim towards the end of the session.
In what was his only hour of track time today, Leclerc started work on the Medium tyre before switching to the Soft. The Monegasque ended up fifth quickest in the end.
In between the sessions, the gearbox was changed on Hamilton’ car and he got through his programme, running the Hard tyre followed by the Soft. The seven-time world champion slightly struggled to extract everything from his car on the red-walled tyres and took 10th.
Despite struggling for one-lap pace on Friday, Leclerc remains confident that Ferrari’s race pace can at least put them nearer to their rivals in theory.
"I jumped into the car for the first time in FP2 today and I felt at ease on the track, but not quite there yet in terms of the feeling I had in the car.
"As usual, our race pace is good, while we have some work to do in order to improve our qualifying trim, so that we can start further ahead and fight at the front of the pack on Sunday."
“Long run [pace] seems to be more positive as we very often have – we are faster on the race [pace] than we are in Qualifying. In Qualifying there’s a lot of work to be done.”
“Our race pace is very positive. We were, I would say, [setting] very similar lap times to the fastest guys, so that’s good, but the problem is that we’ve seen recently that everything is so close, and as soon as you start P6, P7, then in the race it’s extremely difficult to come back where you should be," concluded the Monegasque.
