Leclerc ponders ‘annoying’ deficit to McLaren in Bahrain despite Ferrari updates that are ‘definitely working’

Charles Leclerc has described the pace displayed by McLaren during practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix as “annoying”, arguing that the championship leaders are “on another planet for now”.

McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished a dominant 1-2 in Friday evening’s second session in the Sakhir desert, around half a second clear of George Russell’s Mercedes and Leclerc’s updated Ferrari.

READ MORE: Piastri leads Norris as McLaren dominate second practice in Bahrain

Asked for his thoughts after FP2, Leclerc commented: “We’re just not fast enough. When we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now. It’s annoying, but it’s the way it is. It actually motivates me to try and close that gap as soon as possible, but they are incredibly fast.

“It’s been a tricky session, because it’s so much warmer than the [pre-season] test, and obviously you go into a session expecting the grip that you had at the test and it’s completely different.

“We’ve got to readjust the car and there will be a lot of work during the night to try and turn the situation around tomorrow.”

Pushed on whether Ferrari can challenge Mercedes and Red Bull, the Monegasque added: “With Mercedes it seems that we are pretty much there. With Red Bull it’s a bit more difficult; I think Max [Verstappen] had one less tyre compared to us in FP2, so I think he’s probably a bit in front.

READ MORE: Norris plays down McLaren’s practice pace as he claims rivals ‘didn’t turn up’ on first day in Bahrain

“I think there’s some performance still to be found on our side, maximising the car, the upgrade, and we’ll see where that leaves us tomorrow.”

Leclerc at least confirmed that Ferrari’s upgraded floor appears to be working as expected – something that was echoed by team mate Lewis Hamilton, who ended the day eighth quickest.

“It was fun,” the seven-time World Champion reflected. “It was quite difficult in the morning as always. With the temperature being so high, the grip was terrible on the hard tyre for the first run. Then it’s quite a big shock from hard to soft, which was much better. We made some changes and the car felt pretty decent in FP2.

“[It’s just about] consistency… just trying to put the laps together, having a car that’s easy to drive and that’s consistent through the lap. At the moment it’s a bit different between low, medium and high [speed corners], as you often have.

“We’re just trying to finesse it, trying to tweak it, and make sure that we have good long-run pace, because that’s where you need to be strong here particularly.”

READ MORE: ‘We’re just too slow’ – Verstappen not happy as he reflects on ‘massive’ gap to McLaren in Bahrain FP2

In terms of Ferrari’s latest developments, he stated: “The upgrades are definitely working. A big, big thank you to everyone back home for working so hard on bringing the upgrades, because it’s never an easy thing. It’s a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot of work that goes on in fabricating and putting together these floors.

“It’s just good to see that we’re taking steps forward. We’re trying to now extract more from it and I hope we can make the right steps overnight to tomorrow.”