Leclerc: People start to talk, so it's good to stop that

While Charles Leclerc will be Lewis Hamilton's teammate at Ferrari next year, jobless (for now) Carlos Sainz has mostly had the better of the Monegasque. After all the Spaniard is the only one to have broken Red Bull's streak of victories. In other words, the only Ferrari driver to have won a GP since for the past two seasons.

But on Friday in Sprint Qualifying, it all came good for Leclerc who will start beside Red Bull's SQ pole winner Max Verstappen on the front row for the Sprint Race. He reported in parc ferme: "Qualifying has been the weak point for two races in a row. China was a bit better but we didn't have the car to show that.

"I did one lap in FP1, so I had to go into Qualifying and go flat out straight away. "We only had one set of tyres in SQ1, so it was very tricky but straight away I felt the feeling and the hard work I've done earlier in the season, to put the tyres in the right window, have paid off.

"So I'm happy because there is so much talk now and you are as good as your last race in this sport. When you have two races in a row, where you are bad in Qualifying and I haven't done a great job, people start to talk.

"So it's good to stop that, so now we need to work on the consistency and try to stay at that level and put the tyres consistently in the right window as I've done in the past," declared the Ferrari driver.

In Ferrari's Friday media report, Leclerc added: I can see that the work I put in over the last few weeks to improve tyre preparation has paid off. It was a tough one, as with only one timed lap completed in free practice, I had to go flat out straight into qualifying but I felt comfortable in the car from the start of the session.

"We’ll go for it in the Sprint Race, we don’t know much about the race pace for now but let’s hope we have a good one and go into Sunday with good chances for the win," predicted Leclerc, who was a tenth of a secind shy of the pole-winning time by Verstappen..

In the sister car, Sainz fumbled his Qualifying (as many did in a strange SQ3 stanza) ending three-tenths of a second down on his teammate. He will line up P5 on the Miami Sprint Race grid.

Last year Leclerc finished P7 in the Miami Grand Prix after P2 in the previous year, the first race held at the home of the Miami Dolphins in which Sainz finished P3, last year he ended P5.

As expected, Sainz was disappointed with P5 in Miami Qualy today: "It hasn’t been a great Friday. The feeling in the car changed between sessions and we struggled more during the Sprint Qualifying.

"The lap on the Soft tyre however was coming together more or less ok, but I went for it into turn 17 and made a costly mistake which dropped me to P5. We'll try to recover and then we have another chance to work on the car and turn it around for the Grand Prix qualifying and the main race on Sunday," added Sainz, who will line up P5 for the Sprint Race.

Ferrari F1 team boss Fred Vasseur summed up his team's Friday: "Today we saw a situation similar to last weekend’s qualifying when the circumstances can change massively from one compound to another, while being very close between the top three or four teams.

"Both our drivers felt more comfortable on the soft compound and we can be quite pleased with how things went. Charles did particularly well, after not really doing this morning’s free practice. Carlos was matching him up until the last sector where he lost a bit of time.

"It’s quite difficult to have a clear picture regarding tomorrow’s race because we, along with many others, didn’t do a long run. We will use the Sprint race as part of our preparation for Sunday and see if the set-up choices we made will give us an advantage in terms of tyre management.

"We will need a good start, especially for Carlos, but I think we are in with a chance," ventured Vasseur, whose team have added a dash of Blue to their iconic Red livery, tipping their hat to the great team's history, as well as their new title sponsor HP.