Charles Leclerc realistic about Ferrari’s chances in Azerbaijan: “Back to reality”. Charles realistic about Ferrari's chances in Azerbaijan.

Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc has admitted that it will be “back to reality” for the Maranello team in Baku after the Italian side’s sudden rise to front of the grid at the Monaco Grand Prix in the previous race. Despite the fact that Ferrari were not able to get involved in the fight for pole positions and race wins up until they arrived on the streets of Monte Carlo, Ferrari were very impressive all weekend in Monaco.

First, Charles Leclerc took pole position, only for the Monegasque driver to miss out on the race due to the damage he sustained during a crash in Q3, before Carlos Sainz drove to a second place finish behind Max Verstappen on race day. However, Charles Leclerc feels that the speed shown by the SF21 was somewhat unique to the Monaco layout and will not translate so well to the Baku City Circuit.

“I think it will be a bit back to reality now. Monaco was a one-off, we were fighting for the victory, which was incredible and very nice for the motivation of everyone. But now, with long straights and it is a bit more high-speed in general here, even though there are quite a lot of slow speed corners, I believe we will be back to the normal competitiveness that we’ve had before Monaco.” – he explained.

Carlos Sainz echoed the words of teammate Charles Leclerc, but hopes that the Maranello team can remain “decently competitive”.

“I mean you have this very long straight I think we spend two kilometres flat out. We know that it’s still a bit of a weakness for us in terms of top speed and acceleration, so we know that that is going to put us immediately a bit on the backfoot going into a weekend. But, at the same time, if we manage to get the car working well in the slow corners like we did in Monaco, we can still maybe be decently competitive. Nothing close to Monaco – because Monaco, I think it’s a bit of a one off, a bit of a special case scenario – but we’re still going to try and score some good points this weekend and keep improving as a team.” – the Ferrari driver explained, ahead of the Azerbaijan weekend.

Free practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix gets underway at 12:30pm local time on Friday.