Leclerc insists tyre strategy behind early end to Q3

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc insisted that there was nothing wrong with the SF-23, and that his decision not to get back on track for a final push to fight for pole was not down to problems with the car.

Leclerc was just a tenth of a second off Verstappen's provisional pole lap time after their first runs in Q3 toward the end of qualifying for this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Fans had been expecting one more run from both to decide the issue, but while Verstappen duly emerged and punched in an even faster time, Leclerc climbed out of his cockpit and walked away.

• Read also: Verstappen claims first pole of 2023 in Bahrain qualifying

There was speculation that there was a problem with the car that had forced him out of contention, but Leclerc denied this when interviewed after the end of the session by David Coulthard.

"No there wasn't any issue," he insisted, explaining that the team had felt it was more important to keep an extra set of the soft compound tyres for Sunday's race.

"I think we're in a better place starting third with new tyres than starting first with old or a bit further up," he said. "We seem to have a bit of a weakness for now, so having a new tyre will help us tomorrow.

"I think we were in a fight for pole, which was a good surprise, to be honest," he continued. "I don't know if we would have gotten pole or not, but it would have been close.

"I did not expect that after testing and after the free practices that were a little bit difficult," he added. "We managed to find that pace for the quali lap, which was great.

"However we need to keep in our mind that in the race run, we seem to be a little bit on the backfoot compared to Red Bull."

The final gap between Verstappen and Leclerc was 0.292s, with Sergio Perez slipping between them to make it a Red Bull front row lock-out for the race. Even so, Leclerc was happy with the outcome.

"We are much closer than what we expected, which is looking good for the future," he noted. "It makes Formula 1 more exciting, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the races."

Leclerc's team mate Carlos Sainz will join him on the second row of the grid for the start of tomorrow's race having finished qualifying in fourth place ahead of Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter