Ferrari have the quickest time after two days of pre-season testing however Charles Leclerc believes they haven’t considerably closed the hole to Pink Bull throughout the low season.
“My preliminary feeling is that Pink Bull sadly stays fairly a bit forward,” he instructed the official F1 channel throughout immediately’s take a look at.
His crew mate Carlos Sainz Jnr set the tempo immediately with a greatest 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 information, as a result of once more, information 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 yr,” he stated.
“Final yr, after the take a look at, it was very, very troublesome to push right into a route 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 an enormous drawback.
“This yr the automobile is just not like that, which is a greater start line.”
That ought to permit them to deal with a key weak spot of final yr’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 total, I feel we must 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 big,” he stated. “There was a little bit of a gap within the flooring which we needed to change.
“I had no warning. I noticed one thing, nevertheless it was so skinny that I believed it was a plastic factor. We see generally a few of them across the monitor and we simply go on them and nothing is going on. However this time clearly it was metallic so it harm the automobile a little bit bit extra.”
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