After the opening of the Hungarian Grand Prix, emotional chaos in the Ferrari garage, Charles Leclerc called for a “very positive” start after Lewis Hamilton took part in P3 after two practices, while Lewis Hamilton admitted Friday was “not a good day” around him.
Leclerc, who last claimed to be at the back of the podium in Belgium, looked like he had brought the form to Hungary, the closest challenger to free practices, Michael Laren Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Leclerc reflected on the day after he jumped out of the car when he said of his third place result: “It seems like this is our position now, and in fact, I think it will be very difficult to beat McLarens tomorrow – they seem to be a step forward, but never said it.
“The feeling of cars has been very positive so far. We have to take some steps to go in the right direction tomorrow, but it feels good now.”
Leclerc pushed whether he felt Scuderia was ahead of Mercedes and some other close competitors, but responded to Saturday's qualifying match, saying: “As far as we are concerned, we can never rule them out.”
“It’s always variable from Friday to Saturday, so I think tomorrow we have to go to the track and learn about the new conditions and have to see if the pecking order is the same.
As for Hamilton, the British ranked fifth and sixth respectively during their daily practice periods.
But when asked if he felt he had made positive progress throughout Friday, Hamilton replied: “Today was not a great day for me, and it was a huge struggle with the balance of cars, which is very different from the years I’ve been here.
“We tried two different things, we tried to correct some of the balance problems we had in FP1. We changed the FP2 car and it was just inconsistent, very, very, very inconsistent balance, so you can't say it's just immoral, you can't just say it's allergic.
“It's far from balance from the rails. But I think it might have something to do with possible tire temperatures or something, so we're going to try to figure that out for tomorrow.”
Hamilton downplayed the opportunity as to whether he could hope to get the second row in Saturday's qualifying match.
“I mean, Charles is fast today – he's usually happy with the car. For me, I'm far away, so I'm very skeptical of that,” admitted the seven-time world champion.