Charles Leclerc hopes to be able to put more pressure on the McLaren drivers than he has for much of this season after qualifying second in an upgraded Ferrari at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Lando Norris took pole position by over half a second from Leclerc, who beat Oscar Piastri to second place as the Australian couldn’t complete a final run due to yellow flags. Lewis Hamilton qualified fourth as Ferrari’s new floor helped deliver its strongest qualifying performance of the year so far, and Leclerc expects to be even more competitive in race trim.
“It’s nice; it’s been a long time,” Leclerc said. “I think this year, overall, we’ve been quite weak in qualifying and then pretty strong in the race, but it’s good to be at least [start] from the front row. At least we have a little bit less road to make before fighting with the guys in front. We’re there.
“However, obviously, the gap is pretty big to Lando’s lap, which must have been very special for sure. I don’t know if we’ve got the tools to fight for a victory tomorrow. As I said, we are normally very strong on Sunday compared to the qualifying pace, and this gives me hope.
“I’ll do everything to put more pressure than usual on those two guys. We have Oscar behind with a little bit of luck today, but tomorrow, we will try and look forward and see what’s possible.”
Leclerc says the gains Ferrari’s updates made helped in qualifying but need to be assessed on other types of circuit to have a full understanding of the progress.
“Enough to be P2 because the gaps are very tight around here if you take out Lando,” he said. “So it definitely helped us.
“I felt like there were some steps forward. How much? We need to see it in different characteristics of tracks. It’s not only on this track that we’ve got to judge that, but over multiple tracks. However, the numbers that we expected, we had them, which is a good start. That means that we are working in the right direction.”
Hamilton was similarly encouraged by the feeling he was getting from his Ferrari, after one of his most competitive qualifying performances of the year so far.
“Definitely made some progress overnight,” Hamilton said. “Much happier with the car in P3, and the direction we went, it was really positive. I think edging closer in terms of performance to Charles, who is really, really used to the car – he [hardly ever changes it]. I think that’s really positive.
“I had more time in the lap; I was nearly 0.3 up going into Turn 6, and I had a massive snap, then I came across the line 0.06s up. That would have put me second, so there’s positives in it for sure, and I think, operationally, the team did a really great job today. It was the best qualifying process, operationally, that we’ve done.
“The guys, they’ve definitely been able to extract more from the floor this weekend. It was a really small step. Firstly, from having a new [floor] – there’s degradation on floors, so a new floor is always a little bit better. Then on top of that, [we have the] improvement in performance. I’m really thankful to the team back at the factory for the work they’ve put in to bring it.”
