Charles Leclerc shares new F1 pecking order — with crucial asterisk

Charles Leclerc has outlined why getting a read on the competitive picture for the new F1 season is so complicated, explaining how easy it now is to "hide the real potential" of a car.

The Monegasque driver underlined how there are now "so many tweaks" that can be done to the new power units to conceal their true performance.

With the first official pre-season test in Bahrain descending into a game of cat and mouse over which team has the strongest package at this early stage of the year, Leclerc was asked for his view on where he feels Ferrari is stacking up against its closest rivals.

Alluding to Red Bull and Mercedes both proclaiming the other as the team to beat, the eight-time grand prix winner told media, including RacingNews365: "I think everybody is trying to throw the ball to the other guys.

"It's normal at this point of the season, also because it's so difficult to understand.

"It was difficult with the previous generation of cars, but now with hybrid — and especially the electric — engine being so much more powerful, there are so many small tweaks that you can do, and you can hide the real potential of the car in many, many different ways now.

"So it's very, very difficult for us to understand exactly where we stand."

Leclerc gives verdict on competitive order

The he said, she said behaviour in the first week at the Bahrain International Circuit did not bother Leclerc's boss, Fred Vasseur, who was pleased that it meant no one was discussing Ferrari.

As for how the 28-year-old driver felt things were going for the Scuderia, he was keen to emphasise the team's strong reliability, in comments made before team-mate Lewis Hamilton came to a sudden stop in the SF-26 with just 10 minutes of the first test left to run.

"What I'm happy about is that we are going through our programme, we haven't had any reliability issues so far, and this is a good start," Leclerc said.

"Everything stacks up with what we expected, so that's a good base to then start to work on and to improve."

Assessing the competition, he added: "I think Red Bull has shown very impressive things power unit-wise, since the start of the tests, especially here.

"Mercedes is showing some very impressive things as well, sometimes, but I would say they are hiding a lot more.

"I will expect those two, especially, to be a bit ahead of us. Then, McLaren is a little bit more difficult to understand.

"But from where I stand now, it's Red Bull [and] Mercedes in front and then us. But it doesn't seem to be too much of a gap for now."