Leclerc and Sainz struggling: 'We're quite a bit off the pace'

It's been a sobering weekend for Ferrari, which has disappeared into the midfield runners while their main rivals battle it out for pole position and the front rows for this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc managed to qualify in sixth, but he was nine tenths of a second behind the pole-winning time of McLaren's Lando Norris, and will start behind Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri, George Russell and Sergio Perez.

That's going to make it a tough afternoon at the races for Leclerc on Sunday, and the Monaco GP winner admitted that it was going to be difficult to make any inroads on the leaders when the lights go out tomorrow.

"We knew it would be a tough one today and we maximised our qualifying with P6," he said “The lap was good but we are nine-tenths off. Unfortunately on such a short track it’s a lot, it’s too much.

"We are quite a bit off the pace of our competitors," he told the media in the paddock at Zandvoort. "The target for me tomorrow will be to keep our position and bring as many points home as possible.

• Read also: Norris surges to Zandvoort pole ahead of Verstappen

"I think P6 is the best we can do on a weekend like this. We don’t have enough race pace to do anything better, but if there is the opportunity to do so I will try and take it.”

Leclerc seemed more preoccupied with looking behind him and the threat presented by his future team mate Lewis Hamilton starting from P12. “Lewis will be very strong with the race pace he has. He might [be able to] come back."

Ferrari has been struggling ever since an upgrade package for Spain failed to deliver the improvements the team had hoped for, but this weekend the team has looked particularly anaemic.

Leclerc is pinning his hopes that this might be circuit-specific. "I think a track like this doesn't suit our car. The gap is probably bigger than we'll see on other tracks with the same car, so today we have particularly struggled.

"I hope that from Monza onwards, we'll be in a better place," he said, looking ahead to next week. He said that there was a "roadmap" and that the team was working flat out to deliver improvements.

"I'm not so sure we'll have that until the end of the season but let's wait and see," he said. "That's the reality we;re in at the moment, and we are doing absolutely everything to close that gap as soon as possible."

It's also been a tough weekend for Carlos Sainz as well, although in his case the problem has stemmed from a lack of running time on soft tyres. FP1 and FP3 were both hit by rain, and he missed FP2 with a gearbox issue.

It meant his first laps on the softs didn't come until Q1, which explains why qualifying proved such an uphill battle. Although he made the first cut, he dropped out at the end of Q2 and will start from P11.

"I’m obviously not happy with how things are going this weekend," he said. "Before this session I’d hardly done any laps with the slick tyre so it was always going to be very difficult to do a perfect qualifying around this tricky track.

"Then in Q2, traffic around the high speed section didn’t help either," he sighed. "Missing Q3 by less than a tenth hurts. In general, we are struggling with the car this weekend, but points are given out tomorrow and I’ll try to do my best to recover."

Ferrari principal Frederic Vasseur admitted it had been a difficult weekend so far for Sainz. "He went into quali having been unable to do any laps on the Soft tyre yesterday.

"When the gaps are so small, this is the result and he missed out on Q3 by less than a tenth. I expect Carlos to get back on the pace quite early in the race tomorrow.

"Tonight we will have a good look at what we can do to help him in terms of strategy and tyres."

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