Charles Leclerc saw “good potential” from Ferrari during Friday practice at the Italian Grand Prix.
On home turf at Monza, the Scuderia led both sessions with the Monegasque topping FP1 before teammate Carlos Sainz went fastest in FP2.
The result was perhaps a surprise to both Leclerc and Ferrari, after Charles had been downbeat about expectations on Thursday.
“I think it’s going to be a bit of a difficult weekend, on paper at least it’s going to be a difficult weekend,” the 2019 race winner said.
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“We expect Red Bull to be stronger. The track characteristics don’t fit exactly our cars.
“But again, we’ve had some good and bad surprises this year, so hopefully this one is one of the good ones and that we overperform compared to what we expect.”
And so far, Ferrari appears to be doing just that…
“We still haven’t found the sweet spot in terms of balance,” Leclerc admitted post-practice. “[But] the feeling in the car was good.
“We tried many different things throughout the day and know which direction we want to go in.
“I don’t know how much Red Bull was sandbagging, so let’s wait and see tomorrow when they put everything together. But today the feeling was really good, so I hope that we can keep that feeling.”
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— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) September 9, 2022
Further boosting Leclerc’s chances are grid penalties, albeit of different amounts, for both Red Bull drivers and teammate Sainz.
That means the 24-year-old is almost guaranteed to start on pole without any surprises in qualifying.
“Our race pace looked stronger than our qualifying pace, so if we put it all together there is quite a good potential to have a solid weekend,” Charles added.
“Overall I think we found the direction we want to go in and it’s looking good for tomorrow.”