Leclerc thinks gap between Mercedes and Ferrari is misleading

Charles Leclerc reckons that the current state of the Formula 1 championship rankings doesn’t tell the full story of how the season has gone so far, saying things aren’t “as bad the championship looks” with regards to the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari.

After the opening four races in Australia, Bahrain, China, and Azerbaijan, the Scuderia have a 74-point deficit to Mercedes in the constructor rankings, while Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas comfortably lead in the driver’s.

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Ferrari have displayed fleeting moments of impressive pace, however, and Leclerc is keen for them to become more common.

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

“Obviously we have had two opportunities, once I did a mistake, on the other one we had an issue that cost us a better result. But overall I think the performance is there we just need to try to put everything together in most of the occasions to be using our full potential.”

The next race on the calendar is the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday at the Circuit de Catalunya - the location where Ferrari looked incredibly fast in testing in the summer.

Leclerc believes that the gap in performance between themselves and Mercedes in exaggerated, though.

“I think Mercedes were not that far [behind] even in testing in Barcelona,” the Monegasque driver continued.

“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.”

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