The two Ferrari drivers enter the Chinese GP with an almost identical haul of points. Charles Leclerc has collected 59 so far, whilst Carlos Sainz has 55. The Spaniard, however, missed the Jeddah weekend – finishing ahead of his teammate in the other races.
LECLERC: “SAINZ IS DOING A BETTER JOB”
As such, a peculiar situation has arisen in the Scuderia di Maranello garage. The driver destined to leave the team is performing very well – securing better results than his teammate, who will continue in Maranello. In Thursday’s press conference, Leclerc spoke about his season so far. He made sure to praise Carlos Sainz for his efforts:
“He is doing a better job. Regarding Bahrain, it’s difficult to make comparisons because, for my part, I was facing some problems (with the brakes, ed.). And I think it was a very good weekend on my part, apart from this problem. However, in the last two races, he was simply stronger.”
In both the race and qualifying, Sainz has been faster than Leclerc in recent weekends. The Monegasque, in particular, seems to struggle with tyre preparation before qualifying. This problem was also highlighted by team principal Fred Vasseur on the eve of the Shanghai weekend:
“Now it’s my turn to work, especially in the qualifying phase, which is normally one of my points of strength,” added Leclerc.
“I struggled to put the lap together. It’s a very fine line to be able to do the right thing or completely get the exit lap wrong and to put the tyres in the right window or not. And for now, I’ve struggled more than Carlos did.”
However, the current situation has not affected Leclerc’s confidence in his own abilities. On the contrary, he believes that having a teammate performing so well is a positive:
“He is driving at a very high level, which I think is fantastic for the team and it’s great for me too. I’ve worked a lot on this aspect (qualifying, ed.). Normally, when I work on points, I’m quite confident that I’ll improve quite quickly. So I’m not worried, but obviously, now I have to prove it on the track starting tomorrow in the Qualifying Shootout .”
THE COMPARISON WITH RED BULL
Getting a good performance in qualifying is essential for Leclerc. Not just in relation to Sainz but also to try and apply pressure on Red Bull. Doing this is almost impossible if you start on the fourth row – as Leclerc did in Suzuka. According to the Ferrari driver, the Shanghai track should be more favourable to the SF-24:
“On paper, I think it’s a track where we could be a little stronger than Suzuka, but we’ll approach it the same way. I still think that Red Bull will prevail this weekend, and we will just have to focus on ourselves. As we saw especially in Suzuka qualifying, it can be very easy, if you don’t do a good job on Saturday, to start not from fourth and fifth place, but to slip from fourth to eighth .”
