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Red Bull chief advisor Helmut Marko was impressed with Charles Leclerc's pace during the second practice session of the 2024 F1 Australian GP. He claimed Ferrari was using their full engine power during qualifying runs, while Red Bull needed to sort out their race setup.
In the second practice session, F1 teams tested their qualifying pace since the timing of FP2 and qualifying sessions were the same. During this, Charles Leclerc looked extremely quick and was three-tenths clear of the defending world champion, Max Verstappen. The Ferrari driver topped the timing sheets while Verstappen finished second, followed by Carlos Sainz in third.
Speaking to the German wing of Sky Sports, Helmut Marko stated that Ferrari was practicing their qualifying runs, while Red Bull was not, explaining why Leclerc was ahead of Verstappen in FP2. Moreover, he praised the Monegasque's pace, something that triggered Red Bull to work more rigorously on the race setup.
He said:
"I think Ferrari used full engine in their qualifying simulation and we didn't. That's why I don't consider our 3-tenths gap we have towards them to be serious. But in the long runs, they were impressive. As far as we are concerned, our setup is not yet in place...Leclerc has imposed a step that requires us to do so much fine-tuning on our set-up."
In 2023, Charles Leclerc had a horrendous weekend at Albert Park. Though he qualified P7, he retired from the race on Lap 1 after he made contact with Lance Stroll and got stuck in the gravel.
Charles Leclerc pinpointed the area where Red Bull was stronger in the 2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP
After the 2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP, Charles Leclerc dove deep into one area where Red Bull was stronger than Ferrari. Speaking at the post-race press conference, he admitted that Ferrari's tire warm-up was much trickier than Red Bull's. He added that, due to a slow tire warm-up, he was unable to put pressure on the defending world champions.
He said:
"It was more about tyre warm-up and we struggled a bit more to bring them to the right temperature in order to push. which made it also a bit more difficult because I had to overtake cars during my warm-up. And that was a bit trickier for us than for them. And that's where they pulled the gap, which then stayed more or less stable towards the end. But that was too late for us to put them under any pressure."
Charles Leclerc finished third in the Saudi Arabian GP, behind Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
