Charles Leclerc suggests Ferrari ‘on the back foot’ in Mexico compared to McLaren and Red Bull

Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari are “on the back foot” against Red Bull and McLaren, despite being the second fastest driver on Friday in Mexico.

Leclerc returned to the podium for the first time in six weekends last time out in Austin, and continued to show strong pace at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, falling just 0.153s shy of Max Verstappen’s benchmark.

“Friday was a positive one,” said the Ferrari driver initially, before adding: “We are still on the back foot compared to Red Bull, especially on low fuel, and McLaren, especially on high fuel. No surprises there, we expected them to be the strongest teams coming here.

“But we’ve done pretty good laps. I felt quite good with the car, so we’ve just got to build from that tomorrow, and hopefully, we can gain a bit more performance.”

Speaking after the session, Verstappen expressed a “big concern” about his long-run pace. Having conceded that Red Bull may be out of reach over a single lap, Leclerc suggested the roles could be reversed across a longer distance.

“On the high fuel, we were maybe a little bit better compared to Red Bull, but McLaren was in a league of their own, by a lot,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what was going on there. I hope they were on low fuel, but I don’t know. They seemed to be very strong.

“For now, it doesn’t seem realistic for us to be fighting with them in the race, but we are going to try and make changes in order to get closer to them.”

Lewis Hamilton was not far back from Leclerc, going fifth fastest in the second practice session after being replaced by Antonio Fuoco for FP1.

“I’m surprised how relatively close we are, given how not great it felt,” said the seven-time World Champion. “Every time you come here, because of the altitude, we’re all running really high downforce, but it feels lower than Monza, so you’re sliding around trying to find grip, but it’s not there.

“The car was sliding around a lot. The balance is very open. I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight to try to figure out how to find a more streamlined balance.”

He added: “I definitely don’t want to race what we had today. The long run balance wasn’t disastrous, but we just need to get more from the tyres. I know there’s more pace in the car.”