Ferrari have the quickest time after two days of pre-season testing however Charles Leclerc believes they haven’t considerably closed the hole to Purple Bull in the course of the low season.
“My preliminary feeling is that Purple Bull sadly stays fairly a bit forward,” he instructed the official F1 channel throughout right now’s take a look at.
His crew mate Carlos Sainz Jnr set the tempo right now with a finest time of 1’29.921 on the C4 tyre compound. Nevertheless Max Verstappen was comfortably quickest yesterday, lapping in 1’31.344 on the C3s, greater than a second faster than the competitors.
“Yesterday they’ve performed very spectacular lap occasions,” Leclerc acknowledged. “However that is solely my very own feeling, not taking a look at knowledge, as a result of once more, knowledge doesn’t imply a lot for now.”
“For now, it’s too early to say, we don’t know what are the gasoline ranges of all people else,” he added.
Leclerc is inspired by the enhancements Ferrari have made their new SF-24. “By way of driveability, the automobile is so much higher in comparison with final 12 months,” he stated.
“Final 12 months, after the take a look at, it was very, very tough to push right into a path as a result of we simply didn’t know what the automobile was doing. We might get right into a nook and we didn’t know whether or not we may have excessive oversteer or excessive understeer, which was a giant downside.
“This 12 months the automobile will not be like that, which is a greater start line.”
That ought to permit them to handle a key weak spot of final 12 months’s automobile. “I feel the driveability goes to assist us on the lengthy runs,” he stated. “I feel that for tyre degradation, for race runs general, I feel we needs to be in a greater place.”
Leclerc’s second day within the automobile was disrupted when he struck a free drain cowl. It broken the ground of the SF-24 and compelled Ferrari to change to a spare. “It wasn’t enormous,” he stated. “There was a little bit of a gap within the ground which we needed to change.
“I had no warning. I noticed one thing, however it was so skinny that I believed it was a plastic factor. We see generally a few of them across the observe and we simply go on them and nothing is occurring. However this time clearly it was steel so it harm the automobile just a little bit extra.”
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