Charles Leclerc has pointed out the main weakness that Ferrari has compared to Red Bull at Suzuka this weekend. The Ferrari driver was just 0.010s off Max Verstappen's best time with teammate Carlos Sainz also within 0.057s, marking it one of the closest gaps between the top three this year. Part of this is down to the fact that Verstappen picked up damage on his final lap and thus, was unable to improve his lap. But both Ferrari drivers were still improving on their laps, before both made a mistake due to tyre degradation towards the end of the lap - a characteristic of the F1-75. "The lap was was good, [but] coming in the last sector the rear tires were a bit nowhere," Leclerc explained to media. "I started to lose and the car [had a lot of] oversteer for the last chicane, so I lost a little bit of time there.."
Leclerc: "If Red Bull do that, it's' going to be difficult"
Leclerc thinks that if Red Bull is able to do a 'big step' tomorrow with their race pace compared to one-lap pace, then it will be tricky for them to keep up even in the rain. He added: "Tomorrow is going to be a very tricky race, it looks like the rain will be around - whether it will fall on us, we don't know. "We'll see with our pace. Normally Red Bull are doing a step [forward] for the race. If they do a big step tomorrow then it's going to be difficult."
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