Leclerc reveals how Ferrari bounced back on Satuday after a difficult opening day in Texas

F1 Grand Prix, GP United States, Circuit of The Americas

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc revealed that he slightly struggles to understand how Ferrari managed to find much more performance on Satuday after a tough opening day at the United States Grand Prix.

Following a tough Friday in Texas, Ferrari managed to bounce back on Saturday. Starting from P10 on the grid in the Austin F1 Sprint, Charles Leclerc was completely baulked into Turn 1 by a spinning Lando Norris, but he still managed to negotiate that roadblock, and went on to climb up to fourth.

However, the Monegasque made a mistake while he was hunting down his former team-mate Carlos Sainz. The slight error opened the door for his team mate Lewis Hamilton, who sailed past. The Briton tried to chase down Sainz, but he eventually failed to overtake the Spaniard and finished fourth just ahead of Leclerc.

Having struggled for one-lap pace on Friday, the Scuderia offered much more in the main qualifying. While Leclerc and Hamilton had to fight hard on Friday to secure a spot in the last qualifying segment, both drivers made Q3 with ease. But once there it looked to be going horribly wrong when Hamilton locked up on his first flying run and Leclerc spun.

However, both drivers got their act together in the dying seconds of qualifying and nailed their second laps to bag very decent starting slots with a third place for Leclerc and a fifth position for Hamilton.

Asked how Ferrari managed to turn its fortunes around after a difficult Friday, Leclerc said: "Well, we've changed a few things, but it's not like there's been something that we've done a massive change with. It was all about fine tuning.

"There's something more specific that I've changed on my side, which I think went towards my driving style a little bit and maybe that helped. But a swing of performance like from yesterday to today is still to be understood, to be completely honest. There was more wind. We know that with our car, this is normally a strong point, which probably helped us today. But again, it's a big swing of performance, so we still need to understand.

Pressed on to reveal how different the car has felt so far at the Circuit of th American compared to last year when he won the United States Grand Prix, Leclerc said that he did not find any major differences.

"Not that different. It's just that the overall performance is very poor. So actually, it's pretty similar to last year in terms of qualifying pace to race pace.

"We seem to be pretty strong in race pace, but in qualifying pace, we don't quite find the grip that the others have. Especially in the first sector, we tend to struggle a lot with the grip there and that costs a lot of lap time for the rest of the lap. So, yeah, pretty similar, just slower."

Signing off with a word for his expectations for the race, Leclerc added: "I don't know. A good start like last year probably will help with the free air, but I don't think that we quite have that pace in the car.

"But never say never. I think last year, we were very surprised once we got into free air to see the amount of pace there was in the car. I hope we can have the same surprise tomorrow, but for now, it seems unlikely."