Have Leclerc and Sainz accidentally revealed Ferrari secret weapon?

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have indicated Ferrari has sacrificed its Saturday prospects ahead of its São Paulo Grand Prix assault.

The Scuderia duo finished only seventh and ninth quickest in the Sprint Shootout, used to determine the grid for the 100km Sprint.

Leclerc leads the duo and will start sandwiched between AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, despite the SF-23 having shown strong pace throughout Friday's running at Interlagos.

On why he fell out of pole contention in SQ3, the Monégasque explained: "I don't know who else was on scrubbed tyres but we had old tyres on, so we expected to not be great.

"But we are keeping the new tyres for somewhere else in the weekend."

All focus on Sunday

Whilst Leclerc was reserved over when the new tyres would be used, teammate Sainz divulged Ferrari's plans when addressing his session.

"On the Medium, we were actually quite competitive in Q1 and Q2," explained the Spaniard.

"Then for the Softs, we decided to save the new tyres for the race.

"We just simply decided to sacrifice the Sprint quali and the Sprint to have, hopefully, a better race on Sunday."