Lining up sixth and seventh on the Miami Sprint grid, Charles Leclerc cannot see himself or his team-mate Lewis Hamilton making up positions unless they make gains off the line.

Because Friday’s deficit, he worryingly admitted, is the “pace of the car”.

Ferrari drivers admit pace is ‘just not great’

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

Although Leclerc was second fastest in Friday’s sole practice hour at the Miami Grand Prix, several notable contenders such as Lando Norris, didn’t complete their soft tyre run due to a flag red flag for Oliver Bearman’s crash.

The eight-time Grand Prix winner and Hamilton made it into the evening’s SQ3 session, clear of the cutoff by a good three-tenths of a second where they were fifth and sixth ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell.

But where Hamilton’s former team-mate upped his pace in SQ3, the Ferrari team-mates could not with Leclerc qualifying sixth and Hamilton P7. The Briton’s Mercedes replacement, Kimi Antonelli, clinched his maiden pole position ahead of Oscar Piastri.

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Leclerc isn’t expecting any better in Saturday’s short 19-lap race.

“It’s bad,” was his assessment to the media, including PlanetF1.com. “The lap was good, but the pace is just not at all there for now, so it’s a bit annoying, but it’s the way it is for now.

“I’ll try my best to try and do something special with the start, but to be honest, there’s not much room for improvement. It was just…that’s the pace of the car.”

Asked where the Ferrari is losing time compared to its rivals, the Monegasque driver concedes it’s at every corner.

“It’s every corner, really, so it’s not like we are particularly weak in one type of corner,” he said. “Yes, the slow speed seems to be a little bit more of our weakness, but it changes from one weekend to the other, so it’s just not great.”

Hamilton also wasn’t feeling encouraged about his prospects of moving forward in the short race.

“I thought it was a better session,” he said of SQ. “FP1 was probably a bit better; the car was a bit nicer to drive in P1, but we’re just lacking speed. But I’ll just keep working on from there.

“I think all the cars ahead are faster, so I don’t know what else to say. There’s always ideas [of what to improve], whether or not they’re going to be right or not.

“But there’s definitely learnings to take from today, set-up changes we made and how the car behaved, and there’s definitely work to do to pick up speed going into the rest of the weekend.”

Five races into the season, Ferrari are fourth in the Constructors’ Championship with 78 points, 110 behind McLaren. Leclerc is fifth in the Drivers’ standings where he trails Oscar Piastri by 52 points with Hamilton a further 16 points off the pace.

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