Ferrari are desperate to kick-start their season but a radio message to Charles Leclerc not shown on TV does not bode well for their chances at the Bahrain Grand Prix. If practice is anything to go by, there is only likely to be one team in a position to take victory this weekend.
Both McLaren cars were half-a-second clear of everyone else at the end of Friday. And then final practice on Saturday further underlined their speed around the Bahrain International Circuit as Oscar Piastri produced a time one full second faster than almost everyone else. Other than team-mate Lando Norris, the only driver able to get within that margin was Leclerc. But he was still more than eight-tenths down on Piastri and clearly blown away by the size of the gap.
“Piastri did a 31.6?” he asked over the radio with no small amount of incredulity in his voice. When his Ferrari race engineer Bryan Bozzi confirmed that to be true, he asked: “Where the hell are we losing the time?”
It was to that question that Bozzi gave a rather glum reply which suggests Ferrari are not at all confident in their chances of being able to stop McLaren this weekend. “A bit everywhere,” the engineer bluntly said.
Leclerc’s team-mate Lewis Hamilton was much further off the pace, his best time 1.465 seconds slower than that of Piastri at the top of the timesheets. It was good enough only to put the seven-time champion 10th.
Ferrari have brought extensive upgrades with them to Bahrain and Hamilton seemed to be happy with that progress being made alone, despite still being unable to fight with the McLarens. “The upgrades are definitely working,” said the Brit.
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“And a big, big thank you to everyone back home for working so hard on bringing the upgrades, because it’s never an easy thing. It’s a lot of work that goes on in the wind tunnel and a lot of work that goes on in fabricating and putting together these floors.”
Hamilton had warned that he was not expecting the upgrades to suddenly catapult Ferrari into race win contention and Leclerc confirmed that as he said: “The potential of the car remains the same and we’re just not fast enough.
“When we look at the McLaren, they are just on another planet for now. It’s annoying, but it is the way it is and it actually motivates me to try and close that gap as soon as possible, but they are incredibly fast. Unfortunately, the gap to McLaren is still too big.”
Ferrari pushed McLaren all the way in the hunt for the constructors’ title last year and missed out on the final day of the season, finishing second. But they head into this Bahrain race, the fourth round of the 2025 campaign, down in fourth and already 76 points adrift of McLaren who are leading the championship.
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