Leclerc sees slim chance of podium despite strong quali

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Charles Leclerc managed to put Ferrari onto the second row of the grid for tomorrow's Bahrain Grand Prix after finishing in fourth position in Saturday's qualifying session.

But despite that lofty starting spot, Leclerc feels it's unrealistic to expect that a podium will be possible tomorrow given that the drivers starting ahead of him are Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

"I think the top three realistically is not reachable yet," he told Sky Sports F1 after the end of qualifying. "Our goal is to obviously try at least to keep our position."

Read also: Verstappen takes emphatic pole with stellar final lap

It's not just the 'usual suspects' - Red Bull and Mercedes - who are proving an early challenge to Ferrari's bid to bounce back from a dreadful 2020 season, with Leclerc singling out Red Bull sister team AlphaTauri for praise.

"I have to say that seeing yesterday I'm quite impressed by Alpha Tauri," said Leclerc who will start just once place ahead of Pierre Gasly on Sunday.

"They were very very quick on the race pace yesterday, and they also started immediately, so it's going to be tricky [to stay ahead of Gasly]".

Despite his caution, Leclerc was upbeat about the progress made by the team compared with the slump they fell into last year.

"I think we just have a much stronger car," he insisted. "Whether it's in balance, as I was saying on Friday, I think the car is a bit easier to drive compared to last year.

"We have a bit more power and I can feel it. But then we need to see relative to the others where we are at.

"It's still early days, but it feels like we've done a significant step," he added. "It's only the first quali so let's keep the feet on the ground and keep working very hard.

"But it looks promising for now, and I'm happy to be back a bit."

Leclerc's new team mate for 2021 Carlos Sainz suffered a scare at the end of Q1 when his engine briefly cut out. He was able to get it fired up again and made it through to the subsequent rounds, eventually qualifying in eighth place.

The team will investigate the incident overnight to ensure that the car is fit and ready for the start of tomorrow's maiden Grand Prix of the season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.