Charles Leclerc encouraged by a strong opening day for Ferrari. Charles encouraged by a strong opening day for Ferrari.

Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc may have finished Free Practice 2 for the Bahrain Grand Prix in a relatively lowly P12. But Charles said he’d been encouraged by a strong opening day for Ferrari, as they look to rebuild this year after a trying 2020.

Scuderia Ferrari managed to get at least one driver in the top five for both of Friday’s free practice sessions: Leclerc took fifth in Free Practice 1, 0.599s off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen – while in FP2, his new team mate Carlos Sainz claimed an impressive P4, sandwiched between the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, and with the Spaniard having also claimed P8 in FP1 on his first Friday with the team.

And Charles Leclerc – who while only finishing P12 in FP2 was just 0.765s off the ultimate pace in the tightly-contested session – said he was pleased with what he’d seen from Ferrari on Friday, after a challenging 2020 for the Scuderia.

“Today has been a positive day to be honest,” said Leclerc. “We maybe didn’t expect to be as competitive, even though it’s still very early days for now. But FP1 was positive on my side, FP2 a bit less; I’ve been struggling a little bit with the car here and there, and didn’t manage to finish the lap I wanted to. But overall there is a lot of work [that’s been done]. I can feel there is a lot of motivation in the team, and I can see also, and we can feel, the improvements that have been made since last year, which is good for now. Then tomorrow will be the day when we know exactly where we are compared to the others.

“It is very, very tight and I think qualifying tomorrow is going to be very, very tight,” added Charles Leclerc, “but this is exciting, this is what we like as drivers, to try and make the last difference on track – even though I still believe that Mercedes and Red Bull are still quite a lot in front, the midfield will be very, very tight.”

We’ll get a better sense of Ferrari’s 2021 performance level – including how strong their new power unit is – when the wicks are turned up for Saturday’s qualifying session at the Bahrain Grand Prix.