Charles Leclerc warned Ferrari are starting the 2026 season on the back foot after the opening practice day in Melbourne, with Mercedes showing unexpectedly strong pace. Although Leclerc topped the timesheet in FP1, leading a Scuderia one-two ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton, and both remained inside the top five in the second session, he said rivals — particularly the Silver Arrows — are beginning to reveal their true performance.
After Friday running at Albert Park, Leclerc said Mercedes looked “very, very strong,” especially over race-like high-fuel runs. He suggested they may not have shown everything in low-fuel trim, but their long-run pace made an impression and left Ferrari with more work to do than he would have preferred.
“FP1 was encouraging, but FP2 showed a bit more of what teams have,” he explained. “Unfortunately we seem to be on the back foot compared to Mercedes. On high fuel they looked very impressive — perhaps more than I expected.”
Leclerc also admitted he tried a setup change in the second practice that did not work as hoped. The adjustment felt “really strange and quite bad,” he said, and he will revert the car toward a more familiar balance overnight. He described the SF-26 as still being understood and refined: although winter testing gave the team a solid baseline, they continue to learn and experiment to find the optimum configuration.
“For FP2 I went a bit too aggressive in one direction and it didn’t pay off, but it was a useful test,” he added. “Now it’s about putting everything together for qualifying and the race. I think qualifying could be quite close, but in race trim Mercedes seem to have a little bit of performance on us — we’ll see.”
When asked how confident he was that Ferrari can close the gap if the car is brought into a better window, Leclerc was cautious. He said it was still unclear how much performance Mercedes are hiding and called it too early to be certain. He reiterated that this season will largely be about development: Sunday’s result will be only a starting point, with progress across the year the real battleground.
“We’ll work hard overnight and build from wherever we start on Sunday,” he said. “If we win, fantastic — but either way, we’ll keep developing to try to catch up.”