Charles Leclerc reveals he is confident Ferrari can beat Mercedes at the F1 2025 Bahrain GP but plays down any hope of setting a target of beating McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to the win.
The 27-year-old from Monte Carlo produced a superb lap in Saturday’s qualifying session to go third quickest, which became second on the grid after a penalty was handed to George Russell.
So now he boasts the inside line into Turn 1 and can potentially take the lead from the McLaren to the left of him if he gets a good launch when the lights go out to start Lap 1 at the Bahrain International Circuit.
However, despite being on the front row for the first time in the F1 2025 season, Leclerc plays down his chances of pipping Piastri to the win as he reveals the Ferrari target is whether they can beat Mercedes at the Bahrain GP instead.
“Honestly, McLaren seems to be extremely good with tyre management and more specifically the overheating of the tyres,” Leclerc told members of the media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “We’ve seen it in Free Practice 3 — I think everybody was struggling a lot — but Oscar put a lap in that was very impressive.
“I think tomorrow in the race there will be lots of that, so I don’t think we expect to challenge the McLarens, but we might be pretty close with the Mercedes, also with the Red Bulls.
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“So it’s going to be an interesting race. We all have different tyres. A good start will obviously be essential, especially with high temperatures like this, to have clean air plays a big role.”
Charles Leclerc’s impressive Bahrain GP record
Even though he doesn’t expect his Ferrari to have the pace to fight for the win, something about the track in Sakhir seems to agree with the Monegasque racer based on his history in open-wheel racing.
Going back to 2017 when he competed in Formula 2 with Prema, Leclerc took pole then finished third in the feature and won the Sprint Race before graduating to F1 at the end of that year.
And his success immediately translated as a rookie as he finished 12th on the grid from 18th with Sauber. A move to Ferrari then followed in 2019 and he claimed pole and was on pace to comfortably win before an engine issue allowed Mercedes to catch him as he finished third.
He finished 10th in 2020 in an uncompetitive Ferrari, ahead of Sebastian Vettel, and rebounded in 2021 by qualifying fourth and going on to finish sixth in another year when his team couldn’t compete with Red Bull and Mercedes.
In 2022, he took pole and won the race for the Scuderia after fending off Max Verstappen for large portions of the race, and was on pace to score a podium in 2023, before reliability cost him once again.
Last time out in 2024, he qualified second and finished fourth despite dealing with a Ferrari car that had major brake temperature issues, leaving him struggling to feel when he should stop his car.
So with a historically good record at the Bahrain Grand Prix, Leclerc shouldn’t be ruled out of scoring a big result for the Tifosi.
