©Ferrari
Charles Leclerc delivered a standout performance in Saturday’s Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying, securing a third-place start that exceeded even his own expectations.
Behind the scenes, Ferrari has been working intensely to develop and fine-tune their 2025 challenger, the SF-25 — and the Q3 result, while modest in some respects, marked a turning point for the Monegasque driver and the Scuderia.
Coming into the weekend, Leclerc was cautious. Ferrari had arrived in Bahrain with a new floor and a raft of setup experiments under their belt, but with recent races falling short of expectations, a top-three start wasn’t something he’d been banking on.
"Honestly, I didn't expect P3,” Leclerc admitted after stepping out of the car. “I knew that in Q3 there was some lap time. I knew that in Q1 and Q2 I just had to be patient and wait for the track to come to us.
“It was a bit tricky because at the beginning of Q3 everything felt really bad with the old tyres but then as soon as we put on the new tyres it was quite a bit better."
Leclerc credited his ability to find rhythm late in qualifying and pointed to Ferrari’s bold experimentation as a turning point.
“I’m happy. I did not expect it but I think it’s a result of... we explored quite a lot of extreme setups in the last few weekends, and it feels like I’ve found my way a little bit.”
With Bahrain traditionally being a tough circuit to debut new components, Ferrari’s decision to bring an upgraded floor was a calculated gamble. Though the gain may have been small, Leclerc felt it was enough to help him edge ahead in an ultra-tight midfield.
“The team has pushed like crazy to bring those upgrades here,” he said. “I don't think it's the best track to have upgrades on, but it's always good.
“It's a small gain, not a big one, but hopefully next week it should be a bit more of a step. If we are P3 today, especially considering such fine margins with P3, the upgrades helped.
“And little by little, I hope there will be more performance to extract from the car in the weekends to come.”
Leclerc’s relief was clear, especially following a rocky start to the season that saw Ferrari failing to meet their own expectations.
“I'm speaking more about the expectations that we finished last year, where we are in a good momentum with the team, that you've got a good car, then obviously the expectations of what you are trying to target at least as a team is to at least start from there and try and improve,” he said.
“So on that, we were a little bit disappointed to see that we had gone a step back at the beginning of this year. After this testing, as we said, it's very difficult to know where you are.
“I felt like we maybe kind of saw straight away that McLaren was very strong, but it was still to be confirmed. Now it's confirmed and I hope that we can turn that situation around.”
Despite the early-season challenges, Leclerc’s confidence in Ferrari’s long-term direction hasn’t wavered.
“There's a lot of work in the background, obviously. I think that the last weekend has been more or less where we are as a team, where we stand as a team. We've got a few new parts here, which I hope will help us to close that gap a little bit.”
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