Charles Leclerc Reports On Ferrari: "We Are A Bit Behind"

Leclerc believes that Red Bull is ahead of the Maranello squad after pre-season testing.

Charles Leclerc is looking to put last year's difficulties behind him as he heads into the 2023 season with Ferrari, but in the driver conference ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, the Monogasque isn't feeling overly confident about the performance of his Maranello machinery.

The Monegasque started the 2022 season off strong taking the first pole position and race win of the year. As the races went on, it looked as though Leclerc was in contention for his first drivers' championship win. However, things took a turn for the worse as the season progressed with the Ferrari team suffering from reliability issues, strategic errors, and driver mistakes. 

Leclerc has already made it clear that he was not happy with second place and is coming back to the 2023 season hoping to fight it out at the top for the championship. Speaking about the results of pre-season testing, Leclerc explained:

"We didn't show everything. But Red Bull didn't show everything. Nobody showed everything we will only see in qualifying," the driver said.

So yeah, it's very difficult to know exactly how we are. But the whole picture just tells me we are maybe a bit behind."

Further reflecting on pre-season testing, he assures fans of the team that they made good use of the time:

"Yeah, I think we've had very good testing in a way that we did a lot of laps.

"We didn't have any reliability problems. And we did all the tests that we wanted to do in order to scan what we wanted on the car which is really, really important.

"So the tests were positive. Now to see exactly where we are compared to the others. We'll have to wait"