Mercedes confirms Ferrari’s fears
The suspicions of Charles Leclercexpressed at the end of free practice on Friday, therefore proved to be well founded: the performance advantage of the Mercedes it is much larger than could be expected by analyzing the data from the winter tests in Bahrain. In the qualifications of Australian GPthe first of the year on the fast street circuit of Melbourne, George Russell And Andrea Kimi Antonelli they outpaced all their rivals, inflicting gaps that hadn’t been seen in Formula 1 for ten years. And while the specter of a new domination of the Silver Arrows appears before the fans like the one that characterized the first seasons of the era of turbo hybrid engines, the Monegasque of Ferrari seems to harbor almost the same pessimism…
The pessimism of Charles Leclerc
Leclerc in fact closed qualifying with the fourth fastest time, also behind Red Bull of the surprising Isack Hadjar (“He was impressive for his first qualifying with the new team, congratulations because he deserves it and today he did better than us”) with a gap of over eight tenths from the poleman Russell, on a track where you can lap in less than 80 seconds. A gap which, interviewed by Skythe Monegasque driver himself admitted it was particularly disappointing, then increasing the degree of lack of optimism about the chances of recovering to the microphones of the French journalists of Canal+: “As for the Mercedes, I don’t think there is much that can be done for now. The gap is huge”.
A phrase that doesn’t leave much room for interpretation, despite what is expected – and this was one of the mantras of the winter Frederic Vasseur – that it is more than anything else the evolutions of the current cars and power units that determine the progress of the season, without forgetting that from June onwards there will be new hot measurements on the compression ratio which could partly change the balance of Formula 1. For the moment the Monegasque remains quite disappointed, so much so that he doesn’t believe that Ferrari’s discussed advantage at the start will be able to change things. “Mercedes takes a little longer than us to find the right window at the start, but we’re not counting on this to win tomorrow’s race. I’m more or less sure that they will be able to start well and that there won’t be a big difference at the start”, concludes Charles Leclerc.
