He might have topped the times in Melbourne at the end of Friday's first two practice sessions for the Australian Grand Prix, but Ferrari's Charles Leclerc says there's still a lot of work ahead for the team.
Leclerc's best time of the day was 1:18.978s, putting him almost a quarter of a second quicker than Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the final standings for Friday.
But the Monegasque pointed out that drivers had been busy getting to know the reconfigured circuit, and traffic congestion had also been an issue when trying to get in a clean lap. In particular, he was convinced there was more to come from Red Bull.
"I don’t think that anyone really put their lap together," he suggested after the end of the day's track activity. "[Red Bull] have more than what they’ve shown. Max had a bit of traffic in his fast lap.
"For me, today was a bit of a harder Friday," Leclerc continued. "FP1 was a bit tricky. I improved in terms of driving in FP2, but there is still quite a bit of work to do. Hopefully we will do another step forward for tomorrow in FP3."
"It is going to be very close, so we will have to maximise our car to be starting on pole on Sunday," he acknowledged. "Qualifying is tomorrow, when hopefully we’ll have a good run. Let’s push!"
Leclerc himself didn't have it all his own way, and briefly went off track into the gravel during FP1 as he adjusted to the newly reprofiled and resurfaced Albert Park circuit.
"It’s a very tricky track," he commented. "It’s quicker than before, quite slippery also but it’s always the case on Friday here - obviously we've not been driving here for two days and there are no other races during the year.
"So it takes a bit of time before the track improves and gets the final grip for qualifying. But overall it was quite a positive day for us.
His team mate Carlos Sainz had been quickest of all in the first session, but dropped to third in FP2 and was four tenths off Leclerc's best by the chequered flag.
"It has been an interesting Friday as we had to deal with a lot of new things compared to the last time that we raced here," he commented.
"The track is completely different from what it used to be," he said. "It’s definitely faster, and the new tarmac feels totally different in terms of grip as far as I can remember.
"It was quite tricky out there," he noted. "Quite tough out there to drive. You also saw the struggles that we were having with the bouncing, so it is not easy at the moment
"We need to keep working on understanding how the tyres behave," he added. "But in general I think we have a good baseline to start preparing for tomorrow’s qualifying."
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