Charles Leclerc is “confident” that he has rectified his recent one-lap struggles in Formula 1 as he bids to overturn his recent defeats to Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz.
Leclerc has been a renowned qualifying specialist, but he has been unable to deliver on that in the nascent stages of the 2024 season as Sainz has led Ferrari’s charge.
The Monegasque missed the chance to front a Ferrari 1-2 in Australia as a lacklustre showing left him fifth on the grid while Sainz managed to get onto the front row.
Leclerc was left dumbfounded again as his difficulties continued into Japan last time out, ending up four places behind his team-mate despite being one-tenth adrift.
With that costing him a podium place at Suzuka, Leclerc had addressed that he would spend the break ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix to improve upon his shortfalls.
While he concedes that Sainz has been the stronger driver of the two this term, Leclerc is optimistic that he has since acknowledged the areas where he must improve.
“I think it’s as simple as he’s doing a better job,” Leclerc admitted.
“In Bahrain it’s difficult to compare, because on my side I was facing issues and I think it was a very strong weekend apart from that, on my side.
“However, in the last two races he’s just been stronger.
“So it’s up to me now to work, especially in the qualifying phase, which is normally a strength. I’ve been struggling to put the lap together.
“It’s a very fine line to get it right or completely wrong on the out-lap and getting the tyres in the right window and for now I have been struggling more than what Carlos has done.
“He’s driving at a very high level, which I think is great for the team. It’s great for me as well. I’ve been working a lot on that and normally when I work on points I’m quite confident on improving pretty quickly. So I’m not worried, but obviously now I need to show that on track starting from tomorrow in qualifying.”
Red Bull rebounded from its tough weekend in Melbourne to take a maximum points haul in Japan, with Max Verstappen 20 seconds clear of Ferrari’s Sainz in third.
But while Leclerc expects Red Bull to remain the benchmark, he believes Ferrari’s renewed challenge this season will be boosted at the Shanghai International Circuit.
“On paper, I think it’s a track where we could be a bit stronger compared to Suzuka,” he added. “But we’ll just approach it the same way.
“I still think that Red Bull will have the upper hand this weekend and we’ll just have to focus on ourselves because it can be very easy, as we’ve seen, especially in qualifying in Suzuka, if you don’t do a good job on Saturday and then you don’t [start] from fourth to fifth, but you go from fourth to eighth.”
This weekend’s round marks the first time the revised Sprint format is being used in 2024, allocating the teams one hour of practice to perfect their respective set-ups.
Ferrari’s simulator to track correlation saw it thrive when the tweaked weekend schedule was used last term and could provide an added chance to usurp the Red Bulls.
“It’s going to be very important, especially on a Sprint weekend, we’ve got two qualifying this weekend, to extract the maximum out of the car on both,” Leclerc noted.
“Then in the race I think we are quite strong this year.”
