Leclerc after strong performance in qualifying: "That surprised me"

Charles Leclerc managed to get his Ferrari into P4 during Saturday's qualifying session at the Nürburgring. The SF1000 that Ferrari are using in 2020 seems to have taken another step in the right direction this weekend. 

Ferrari competitive

“From this morning we were quite competitive. It surprised me, because I expected with this cold weather to struggle quite a lot as we have done in the past but we are actually pretty competitive," says Leclerc in conversation with Ziggo Sport.

Leclerc was briefly used the medium tyres in Q2 on Saturday. “It was a bit optimistic, but we tried it and actually it wasn't that bad. But looking at the lap times it is better that we were on the softs afterwards. I changed my approach from this season. I push in every single lap that I do, while last year I was taking it easy in FP1, FP2 and FP3. Now I'm flat out from FP1 to the race. This helps me become more consistent on the limit and at the moment I feel very comfortable with the balance, but we are missing some performance," says de Monegasque.

No great expectations

“It looks good, but the race is a different story. Especially here, because all the drivers are going into the unknown a bit. We have not done any runs with full fuel, so it will be very difficult," Leclerc concludes.