At Ferrari, we are wary of Verstappen's racing pace

Charles Leclerc signed the tenth pole position of his career this Saturday in Bahrain, ahead of the reigning world champion Max Verstappen and his teammate at Ferrari Carlos Sainz. And if the Monegasque has good statistics on Saturday over a lap, he has on the other hand only converted his leading positions into victory twice (Monza and Spa in 2019). The fault mainly has a car 2019 which was not as fast in the race as in one lap. So obviously, in light of the first Grand Prix of the season, the question of racing pace arises. 

Asked about their pace in the race, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had difficulty positioning themselves. "I do not really know, explained the Spaniard. I spent the weekend chasing performance on a lap because I was far from my teammate from free practice 1. The question of long stints is therefore a huge unknown for me. If I look at the ones made by Charles, it didn't look bad at all, even if it seems that Red Bull also had some strong runs.”

Verstappen advantage?

Accustomed to somewhat compromising his pace in the race to qualify as high as possible in 2019 and 2020, Charles Leclerc for his part maintains that he did not go all-in on the qualification. “I don’t think we have compromised in any way the performance for tomorrow (Sunday). We didn't try the long stints a lot on Friday compared to what we can usually do in FP2, because we did a lot of laps during winter testing, so we preferred to concentrate on the short stints."he explained.

Pole Position babyyyyyyyy!
Happy with this, but it is only qualifying, let's finish the job tomorrow 💪
And so happy to see that after all the hard work of the last two years, we are back in the fight. @Scuderia Ferrari ❤️ pic.twitter.com/poKAxVE3tY

- Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) March 19, 2022

Get rid of Mercedes at least temporarily while waiting (perhaps?) for them to redo the cherry, Max Verstappen seemed very happy with his second place, remembering above all that he had a competitive car and therefore a good basis for the coming season. For his two acolytes in red who will escort him on Sunday at 16 p.m. (French time) during the Grand Prix, it is he who has the best package for Sunday. “Max clearly has very solid race pace, explained Carlos Sainz. Both Friday and today (Saturday), as soon as he took on a lot of fuel, he was very fast. He definitely starts with an advantage, but as a team we need to make sure we take a leap forward to keep him behind». 

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