Leclerc hopeful Sprint disadvantage can aid Qatar GP

Charles Leclerc is hopeful that Ferrari's tyre strategy to not use an extra set of Mediums in the Sprint will pay off in the Qatar Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver was one of a few to run the Soft tyre for the 19-lap Sprint, with his already being six laps old when they started the race.

While he was able to get past Lando Norris in the opening stages, the tyre degradation was too high towards the end and Leclerc fell back behind the McLaren.

They soon fell into the clutches of Lewis Hamilton, who passed both him and Carlos Sainz in the closing stages on the Medium tyre.

To make matters, worse, Leclerc was then hit with a five-second penalty post-race for exceeding track limits dropping him from seventh and out of the points.

Leclerc: We had good tyre management

When asked why he opted for the Soft, Leclerc told F1 TV: "We didn't have any choice, obviously that's the only tyres I have left because we used two new tyres in Q3, one new in SQ3, so I didn't have any new soft left.

"That made it a bit more difficult, because they were already damaged. But we has quite good [tyre] management.

"We didn't use the Mediums like the others did and it seems like a strong tyre, so that's good for us."

Leclerc expects the Medium will give drivers a better advantage when overtaking out of the a key area in the track.

"It's all about how good you are in the last corner basically, then it makes it very easy or very difficult to overtake," he said.

"With the Medium it seems they had a good front in the last corner, which helped a lot to overtake."