Leclerc: Ferrari not as bad as the championship looks

Charles Leclerc insists Ferrari’s current championship position at the start of the 2019 Formula 1 season is not a genuine reflection of its true performance.

Despite being billed as the pre-season favourites, Ferrari is currently 74 points adrift of Mercedes after failing to win a race in the opening four rounds of the campaign, while its chief rival has recorded four straight one-two finishes.

But Leclerc believes the championship table appears to exacerbate the situation Ferrari finds itself in, and he remains confident of a turnaround.

“I don’t think it is as bad as the championship looks,” Leclerc said.

“We have had opportunities, once I did a mistake, on the other one we had an issue that cost us a better result.

“I think overall the performance is there, we just need to try and put everything together, in most of the occasions to be using our full potential. I don’t think there has been a drop in performance from Barcelona until now.

“I think the only weakness at the moment is we need to try and understand the car a bit more and in which optimal conditions it works and try and put it there as much as we can.”

Leclerc refuted suggestions Ferrari was clearly ahead of Mercedes after testing and hopes the introduction of the Scuderia’s first engine upgrade of the year can help improve its fortunes as it returns to the circuit it looked so strong at in pre-season.

“I think Mercedes were not that far [behind] even in testing in Barcelona,” he explained. “The last day [was] the only day where they actually pushed a little bit and in the last laps they did a very similar lap time to ours.

“So I don’t think they were ever very far away, and we don’t even know how much they pushed in the last day of testing. It’s not right to say that we were a lot for ahead after testing.

“Hopefully the improvements we’ve brought here put us a step forward and then we’ll see for the rest of the season. Normally Barcelona is quite representative track for the performance of the car so hopefully we’re strong here.”