A defeated Leclerc after qualifying: 'The goal now is to beat Perez'

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz looked like serious contenders for pole in Melbourne. But, in the end, Max Verstappen was once again too quick for Ferrari. While Sainz qualified on the front row of the grid, teammate Leclerc had to make do with fifth place. The Monegasque is under no great illusions for Sunday's Grand Prix.

Leclerc felt throughout Saturday that things were not going as smoothly as a day earlier. "To be honest, I think it started much earlier in the weekend," the Ferrari driver explained about why the pole turned out to be way off after all. "FP3 already I felt like it was going away a little bit from me, but I was confident it would come back, the feeling in qualifying, as is normally the case whenever we have a strange feeling in FP3."

"Then you put the new tyres on in quali, low fuel, and everything comes alive again. Today wasn’t the case. I struggled quite a lot with the front tyres until the last run in Q3, when I went very aggressive with the front wing to try something and I went the other way. But all in all, it hasn’t been a clean day for me. I haven’t been driving as well as yesterday. But the race is long tomorrow, and I’ll try to maximise everything."

Leclerc saw Red Bull step up a gear

Leclerc was already not taking pole into account after FP3, he looks back: "In FP3, I had a big doubt when I saw that Red Bull started to put the engine on full power. From Turn 7 to Turn 9, I think we were already losing three-tenths, so that was huge. Then, from that moment onwards, I thought that pole position might be difficult. But then in Q1, we were very strong, so I thought OK, maybe. In the end, it wasn’t."

In any case, Leclerc is not taking victory into account. "Again, realistically, it’s going to be difficult to target the win because Max is going to be too strong. Checo might be a target, but they seem strong once again because they have more margin than we thought they had yesterday. But all in all, my target is to try to come back and be on the podium, and if beating Checo is a possibility, we’ll try."