Charles Leclerc has expressed his shock at Ferrari's surprise performance in British Grand Prix Sprint qualifying, as he explained how Lewis Hamilton is extracting more from the car.
Hamilton roared to pole position for today's Sprint event, having topped the sole practice session and all three Sprint qualifying segments with Leclerc eventually taking fourth place, behind Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen.
However, the Monegasque was 0.327s slower than Hamilton in SQ3, after struggling through recent weeks with the feeling in his machine.
Reflecting on the "surprise" result of Hamilton being on pole, Leclerc spoke about how he is struggling to match his team-mate for feeling behind the wheel.
"We are extremely surprised with Lewis taking pole, but in general, we were expecting a much bigger gap to the cars in front," Leclerc explained.
"So it is a good step forward, and I think we as a team are very, very surprised to be that competitive on a track like this.
"What I have realised is that I don't have the ease I had with last year's car, and even when I push, whenever I put things together, Lewis is more often at 100% potential of the car, which I am not.
"So I've got to work on everything, but most importantly, it is just the feeling with the car.
"When you don't quite get the feeling, then it is difficult to extract the lap-time, and have the confidence of going into qualifying and to get to the limit of the car, which I am struggling to be consistent with, being at 100%.
"In Q1 and Q2, I was quite close to it, and I was quite confident for Q3, but in Q3, I lost the car, and didn't feel it as well as I should."
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