Charles Leclerc insists Ferrari F1 update “a good step forward” despite gap to pole

Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari’s recent F1 upgrade is working as intended despite a 0.3s gap to pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Leclerc could only manage fifth on the grid for Sunday’s race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

The Monegasque driver was beaten by the two Mercedes drivers, while there was a more significant gap to pole-sitter Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, who narrowly missed out on top spot.

Ferrari had introduced a significant upgrade for this weekend but never looked like they were capable of truly challenging for pole position.

Despite this, Leclerc thinks the recent package is “a good step forward”.

“No, it's sure that the upgrade that we brought is doing what it's supposed to do and it's a good step forward,” Leclerc said.

“However, it's always a relative sport and other teams have also brought upgrades and so then it all depends how much of a step forward everybody is doing.

“For sure there's more optimisation with this new package that we can do, but I wouldn't take that as an excuse. I think we are just lacking a little bit of pace this weekend.”

Ferrari suffered their worst weekend of the year last time out in Canada as both drivers failed to finish the race.

Before that, they were nowhere pace-wise with Leclerc nursing an engine-related issue.

Leclerc conceded that he struggled for performance up until qualifying but praised the turnaround since practice.

“I've had a very difficult time until quali really, until FP3 I would say,” he added. “FP1 and FP2 was extremely difficult for me. FP1 we had the old package, we had to obviously do the compare between the two cars which was needed.

“But on a track like Barcelona, when you lose two sets of tyres, it's difficult because you only have one lap per set and then you lose six or seven tenths on the second time lap. So just being a bit late to get into the rhythm. In FP2, the car felt really out of place and the balance… I was really struggling.

“Today we changed basically, not everything, but a lot of things in the car. In FP3 I felt straight away much more at ease, however the pace is just not there. I'm happy in a way with the progress, with the feeling that I've had from yesterday to today, which I think will pay off in the race.

“I'm not happy and I'm disappointed with the pace of the car today in qualifying because we are further away than what we had anticipated.”