Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc’s ninth place in the second free practice session at the Bahrain International Circuit should not be surprising. It’s still the first day of free practice, and the teams are still playing hide and seek with their performance. We are also far from pole position times: with today’s time, Lewis Hamilton would have been seventh on the grid in the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix, with a ten-thousandths of a second advantage over himself.
Furthermore, the Monegasque driver was not able to fully utilize his fast runs in the afternoon, first due to a mistake in turn-4 and then due to two impeding incidents that cost him tenths of a second per lap and led to some swearing over the team radio (“Everyone sleeps tonight”).
Charles Leclerc’s comments after FP2
“I would have been surprised if there hadn’t been a battle, I expected to be there with the others, the only question mark is Red Bull and how far ahead they will be compared to the others. But I would be surprised if we weren’t fighting with the others,” commented the Monegasque driver after Thursday’s free practice session in Bahrain.
“The feelings were good, in this case, too, there were no big surprises, at least on our part, so that’s a positive thing, no bad surprises, but also no good surprises, just as we expected the car to be. So, we carried out our program. In the FP2, I made a small mistake on my fast lap. But aside from that, now everything is up for decision for tomorrow, trying to focus to make a step forward. Mercedes seems strong, which is a bit of a surprise, but we don’t know what fuel load they are running. So, I believe tomorrow we will have all the answers. Our pace seemed quite good. The feeling was quite good, I felt once again quite comfortable with the car, and it’s a much better start compared to last year, where we arrived at the first race and it was very difficult to know exactly what was the right window to optimize our car. Today is not like that, we know we are in the right window to give our best with this car. Now everything depends on tomorrow, to try and anticipate tomorrow’s conditions and get the best out of this weekend,” added the Monegasque.
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“There’s not much to say other than it’s still difficult to define our level of competitiveness, while even today we had no surprises. Nevertheless, it was nice to get in the car and start comparing ourselves with the others, truly kicking off the season. We still have a lot of work to do, especially in terms of balancing. I’m curious to see where we will find ourselves tomorrow.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded.
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