Charles Leclerc was encouraged by Ferrari’s productive pre-season tests but said he is unsure how competitive the team will be in the first race of the new season this weekend.
“It’s definitely been a smooth six days of testing,” said Leclerc as F1’s pre-season running drew to a close in Bahrain last week.
“It’s definitely one of the smoothest preparations I’ve had for a season,” he added. “No major issues.”
Ferrari covered more kilometres in testing than any team bar Mercedes, who only did a handful more. Leclerc said it was an impressive start for the team given the radical change in technical regulations for the new season.
“On such a new project you always expect to find some barriers in the way,” he said. “For now, apart from proposing which is still kind of an issue in some conditions, it’s been quite smooth and we managed to just keep improving.”
However he hasn’t drawn any conclusions regarding how competitive Ferrari may be. “As we’ve seen…