Charles Leclerc: Ferrari don't know what to do

Charles Leclerc

Leclerc: Ferrari don't know what to do

Mercedes are 'out of reach' in Monaco

Matthew Scott

Friday 24 May 2019 16:08

Charles Leclerc says Ferrari ended Thursday practice for the Monaco Grand Prix still searching for exactly where they need to close the huge gap to Mercedes. Leclerc was within three tenths of a second of Lewis Hamilton in FP2, but Ferrari were further adrift in FP2.

Leclerc's running in the second practice session was hampered and he could only run 10th-fastest.

Ferrari were on the back foot throughout the day, with Hamilton topping both timesheets with Valtteri Bottas in close quarters and Max Verstappen pushing the Mercedes pair in FP1 as well.

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Leclerc says Mercedes are untouchable heading into the weekend, and is unsure if a fix will be found before qualifying and the race.

"It was very difficult, particularly in FP2, as some things were not working on my second run," he said.

"This is no time to panic but we're clearly behind Mercedes. [They are] out of reach for us, so we have to focus on what we have to do, find the best solutions for our car and then we'll see.

"The target is to improve and close the gap. It will be very difficult to get to the front row of the grid but nothing is impossible until qualifying is over. We'll work to improve quite a lot.

"To be honest from now we are working to close the gap, so we don't know yet what we need to do.

"We expected [Mercedes] to be strong here because they were very strong in the low speed corners in Barcelona for example, but we need to focus on ourselves, try to put these tyres in the right window - which we don't do at the moment - and then we'll see."