Charles Leclerc was pleased by his personal progress in qualifying despite a sizeable gap to Mercedes at the French Grand Prix.
The Monegasque has shown his lack of experience over a single lap with a few errors and generally not quite on the level of teammate Sebastian Vettel during 2019.
But that all changed at Paul Ricard as it was Leclerc who showed greater consistency to claim third, finishing almost a second clear of his Ferrari partner.
“I was completely aware that my weak point in the last few Grands Prix was putting my car in the right window in Q3,” Leclerc said via Crash.net post-session.
“So I really worked hard for that, and I was very happy to see that there were improvements this weekend on that.”
The only disappointment was a near two-thirds of a second deficit to polesitter Lewis Hamilton as Mercedes’ superiority was once again on full display.
“The gap is still quite big, so we need to work, and hopefully tomorrow it will be an exciting race,” the 21-year-old noted.
“It’s going to be difficult [to fight Mercedes] because their pace on Friday was very, very, very strong. I think a good start will be very important, and then we’ll see what happens.”
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In Q3, there was a small moment of uncertainty when Leclerc requested Vettel speed up to ensure he made the start/finish line in time to start a final flying lap.
Leclerc played it down, however.
“The only thing is that I think twice, I can’t remember when exactly, twice we were very tight on time through the finish line,” he revealed.
“So that is why I was asking the team to say to Seb just push because I would be very tight. That was the only reason, but no, he didn’t compromise my qualifying.”