Charles Leclerc says it is “no time to panic” at Ferrari but conceded that Mercedes is “out of reach” for the team at Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix.
Mercedes, which has opened 2019 with five successive 1-2 finishes, led the way through both Thursday practice sessions in Monaco.
Lewis Hamilton edged team-mate Valtteri Bottas but the quickest non-Mercedes driver, Leclerc’s Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel, was seven-tenths adrift.
Leclerc was left only at the foot of the top 10 in the wake of a scruffy qualifying simulation on Soft tyres.
“It was very difficult, particularly in FP2, as some things were not working on my second run,” he said.
“This is no time to panic but we’re clearly behind Mercedes. [They are] out of reach for us, so we have to focus on what we have to do, find the best solutions for our car and then we’ll see
“The target is to improve and close the gap. It will be very difficult to get to the front row of the grid but nothing is impossible until qualifying is over. We’ll work to improve quite a lot.”
Leclerc added that getting Pirelli’s tyres into the right operating window remains a challenge that Ferrari has yet to fully master.
“To be honest from now we are working to close the gap, so we don’t know yet what we need to do,” he said.
“We expected [Mercedes] to be strong here because they were very strong in the low speed corners in Barcelona for example, but we need to focus on ourselves, try to put these tyres in the right window – which we don’t do at the moment – and then we’ll see.”
