Charles Leclerc has hailed his Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel after he seized the first pole position of his Formula One career yesterday during qualifying for today’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
“Seb is an amazing driver,” said the Monaco driver, who joined the Italian outfit this season – “I’ve learned a lot from him and I will learn more, but today I’m very happy to be in front of him. The car is amazing. I will try to finish the job tomorrow. The target now is to focus on the race and try to do the best race possible but obviously it’s amazing to be here.”
The Ferrari duo secured the front row for today’s race and, at 21 years and 165 days, Charles Leclerc is the second youngest pole sitter ever – the record held by Sebastian Vettel who did it at 21 years and 73 days with Toro Rosso at Monza in 2008.
Sebastian Vettel said: “Maybe I was a bit shy in the second sector, Charles did a very good job today and deserves to be on pole, it puts us in a great place for tomorrow. The main thing is we got the job done.”
Leclerc put in a mighty lap to ensure pole under the floodlights of the Sakhir circuit, displaying once again the pace that Ferrari have had in spades in Bahrain. He set a lap record of 1min 27.866sec, two-tenths clear of Vettel and a full three-tenths up on Hamilton.
The lap was inch-perfect, but the Scuderia had been on top all weekend, quickest in every practice session and had form that Leclerc exploited ruthlessly. He was quickest on the first hot laps in Q3, exactly matching the track record of 1.27.958 before going even quicker on his final run.
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