Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc is “confident” the Maranello team can regain the form they showed and enjoyed in the pre-season testing in Barcelona last month, and demonstrate it where it matters.
Charles Leclerc made his debut for Scuderia last weekend – finishing in fifth-place; a place behind his new team-mate Sebastian Vettel, after team orders told the 21-year-old to slow down and not to overtake the German driver.
Straight away in the season, despite the two drivers starting on the same points, Ferrari made its priority for the season very clear – with Vettel being its “number one” driver and Leclerc having to assist the four-time world champion.
Ferrari were the quickest out of any team in Barcelona, when the Formula 1 grid conducted its pre-season testing in February – with many predicting the Italian team to be a real force this season and give Mercedes a proper challenge.
But the two Ferraris were 35 seconds adrift of third-place Max Verstappen – who overtook Vettel earlier in the race – and Lewis Hamiltonand Valtteri Bottas were even further ahead, with the latter, and eventual race-winner; almost a minute in front of the two red cars.
“At the end, I think it’s not like we arrived with a very different car to testing,” Leclerc explained to RaceFans.net. “It’s not like Mercedes (who) has come with a very different car. So I think the car is there. In the past, it has been seen quite a lot of times that it’s a strange track, and it’s not always very representative of the real performance of all the cars here in Australia, so I’m confident we can come back. How much? We don’t know, and this we’ll only know in two weeks (Bahrain). But yes, I’m confident.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded.
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