Leclerc fears Ferrari 'lacking' after challenging Friday

©Ferrari

Ferrai admitted that their form was difficult to assess after a "challenging" day of practice at Yas Marina Circuit ahead ot this weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz concluded the evening session in eighth and ninth respectively, with both drivers suggesting that changes made to the track since last year's event had made it a difficult day.

"I quite like the new layout and it was fun to drive," Leclerc said. The track evolution was quite big over the course of the day, but that’s more down to the temperature as it becomes much cooler here in the evenings.

Read also: Hamilton quickest from Ocon in twilight second practice

"This helps us to gain grip," he noted. "Tyre degradation is quite high but I think our car is reacting well to this circuit so far.

"We are lacking a bit there compared to some of our closest competitors and I hope we can put it all together for tomorrow," he admitted.

"In terms of pace, we did a good job with the race simulation and still have a little work to do to prepare for qualifying.

©Ferrari

"It’s been a challenging day here in Abu Dhabi," was the summary from Sainz. "The new track layout and surface are making it very different to any other year we’ve driven here in the past.

"It’s been a very difficult Friday because since FP1 I wasn’t feeling at home in the car and I’ve been chasing the balance the whole day. That’s quite unusual.

"We’ve been starting on the right foot pretty much every weekend and today, I feel we have a lot of homework to do, going into Saturday.

"We will now sit down with the engineers, see where we can improve the car and hopefully find more performance for tomorrow."

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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.