Charles Leclerc warns ‘Red Bull quite a bit ahead’ despite headline Ferrari pace

Charles Leclerc believes Red Bull are still “quite a bit ahead” of Ferrari despite the Italian team showing outstanding pace on day two of F1 pre-season testing in Bahrain.

Leclerc topped the morning session before handing over to teammate Carlos Sainz.

Sainz lowered the overall benchmark and was the only driver to set a lap time below 90 seconds, albeit on the C4 tyre.

Max Verstappen’s pace on day one caught the attention of many in the paddock, with Red Bull the heavy favourites heading into next weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

Assessing the current competitiveness of the SF-24, Leclerc said: “It feels like every winter test which means that we don’t understand a thing because for now it’s too early to say.

“We have no idea what the fuel levels are of everybody else. In terms of driveability, the car is a lot better compared to last year. Last year after the test it was very, very difficult to push it into a direction because we just didn’t know the car was doing.

“We would get in a corner and we didn’t know if we would have extreme oversteer or extreme understeer.

“This year the car is not like that which is a better starting point, however, my initial feeling is Red Bull remains quite a bit ahead. Yesterday they’ve done very impressive lap times but that is only my own times, not looking at data for now.”

Day two in Bahrain was curtailed by a loose drain cover, causing the morning session to end prematurely.

Unfortunately for Leclerc, it was he who ran over it, damaging the floor on his car.

Reflecting on the incident, he said: “It’s like this. In the end it wasn’t huge. There was a bit of a hole in the floor which we had to change.

“Apart from that, I had no warning. I saw something but it was so thin I thought it was a plastic thing. We see some of them around the track and we just go on them, and nothing happens, but this time it was metal. It hurt the car a little bit more.”