Ferrari concluded the first day of track at the Australian Grand Prix with second place achieved by Charles Leclerc in the second free practice session.
Before the arrival of the rain, the Monegasque signed the second fastest time of the day, 4 tenths behind the reference time set by Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. Both used the medium compound to set the best times, therefore with the same tyres.
In truth, time matters little. Qualification and race pace were not tested due to the arrival of the rain. Yet Leclerc seems to have felt better sensations than in the first two outings of the season.
“We have still done some work aimed at the set-up and it seems to me that the feeling is slightly better than in the first two races of the season. This is positive”, said Charles at the end of the second free practice session in Melbourne.
“Maybe we had the best FP2 of the season, which probably doesn’t mean much, but at least we finished Friday in the right way. Now we have to work to take two more steps in the right direction for tomorrow. We hope to be closer to the Reds Bull in qualifying and, above all, the day after tomorrow…”.
Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
At the start of the season, Ferrari proved to be better on flying laps than on race pace. Leclerc himself admitted that the situation that could arise over the rest of the weekend will presumably be similar to what was seen in Sakhir and Jeddah.
However, the rain ruined the plans of the teams – including Ferrari – so many will arrive in the race less prepared than they would have liked. It is almost certain that Ferrari will use at least part of the long run Free Practice 3 to get some more data in view of Sunday’s race.
“In qualifying, I think we’ll still be close to the best. In the race, we don’t know, because the arrival of the rain allowed us to run on wet tyres. So we’ll go into the race a bit blind. Maybe we’ll use Free Practice 3 to do a few more long runs and get a few more responses from those”.
Ferrari gave the 25-year-old native of Monte-Carlo good sensations today, but in his opinion the team will be able to further improve the SF-23 thanks to some modifications it will make during the evening.
“I think that by making some changes that we didn’t make today, we’ll be able to find more performance. However, we mustn’t forget that we really struggled a lot over the last two races. Of course we won’t find all the pace we need, but I think it will be a further step in the right direction”, concluded Leclerc.
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