Leclerc sets realistic aim for Ferrari on Sunday

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Charles Leclerc will start tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix from fifth on the grid alongside Ferrari team mate Carlos Sainz in sprint qualifying.

That's a two-place gain for Leclerc on where he finished on Friday, thanks to Pierre Gasly crashing out at the start of the sprint and race winner Valtteri Bottas starting from pit lane due to engine change penalties.

And objectively Leclerc didn't think that either he or Sainz were likely to be able to improve on that in tomorrow's race.

Read also: Bottas wins sprint as Verstappen snatches Italian GP pole

"We had a good sprint qualifying and maximized our potential, finishing 6th and 7th. Due to Valtteri’s penalty, we will each move up a place and lock out the third row of the grid, which is the best we could have wished for.

“The realistic goal is to keep our positions, because to fight for more than that is going to be very, very difficult,” he admitted to the media after the end of Saturday's 18-lap race.

“We’ll focus to maximise the car and, hopefully, we get a good result," he continued. "Tyre management will be a key factor tomorrow, especially on the first few laps where you have to push.

"It should be a bit more interesting, hopefully, with the tyre degradation, because tyre degradation is quite high here.

"We have some useful data from today and will work on finding the best front-wing setup based on that.

"I expect the race to be a tough one, because our competitors ahead have had a strong pace all weekend.

"Our job will be to score as many points as possible, and if we have a perfect race, we can put some pressure on the four cars in front."

It's already been a tough weekend for the Monegasque, who suffered from an engine glitch on Friday that forced the team to revert to an old power unit today.

And this morning he was forced to cut short his run in final practice after feeling unwell.

“I’ve known better days, physically it’s not great today," he admitted. "But the most important is that I delivered 100 per cent of myself in the car, and felt quite good in the car. So it's all good."

Leclerc declined to go into details about his sudden illness but agreed with the suggestion that the adrenalin involved in a race tended to work wonders.

"It depends on what you have, sometimes it’s difficult to forget," he said, adding that he didn't want to "go into details" about the illness and that he didn't "think you want to know".

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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.