Leclerc: I just want to have a clean race

The past few races have been brutal for Charles Leclerc, as between power units blowing out and Ferrari's tactic team imploding, he now finds himself third in the Formula 1 Driver's Championship, 43 points behind leader Max Verstappen.

In Austria, Verstappen took pole, 0.029s from Leclerc, but the Ferrari driver is fine with that as long as he has a clean race

"I just want to have a clean race," he said after qualifying. "It's been five races where I've had a bit of a disaster on my side.

"I just hope that everything will go clean in the weekend and we can finally score the points that we deserve," he added.

Speaking later in the team's media brief, the Monegasque said: "It was very close, but Max was just in front today.

"I had some understeer after the red flags as I struggled to get the tyres back in the right window, so I didn’t have a perfect lap.

"It’s a shame, but it’s only Friday and it’s Sunday that really counts. Tomorrow it will be important to work on driving style in FP2 and then have a very good Sprint," he concluded.

Ferrari's Race Director, Laurent Mekies added: "We knew it would be a very closely fought qualifying, a head-to-head between us and our competitors.

"During this morning’s free practice, we worked a lot on optimising our package and we were then competitive enough to fight for pole down to the nearest thousandths of a second.

"We didn’t manage to secure the number one slot, but that’s what can happen when the gaps are so small and it’s all part of the game. We will try and change that in the race.

"The main aspect of this weekend is that it’s a very long one. Effectively it’s a 400 kilometre race run in two parts. We have seen that our potential is there and that we have started out on the right footing," he explained.

"Now, those of us here at the track and our colleagues back in Maranello can expect a really interesting challenge. The gap to our rivals is minimal, so if we want to reverse today’s result, the slightest detail can make the difference.

"We will do our utmost to ensure our drivers have everything they need to extract even more performance from their F1-75s," Mekies concluded.