Leclerc: The lap was a bit scrappy

Scuderia Ferrari topped the only practice session on Friday, with Carlos Sainz ahead of teammate Leclerc. After such a promising start to the United States Grand Prix weekend, expectations were high for the Maranello-based outfit.

However, it wasn't to be for either of the drivers in red, as Leclerc couldn't get his SF-24 onto the front row with P3 in Sprint Qualifying while Sainz ended up a little further down in fifth.

There was quite a gap from Leclerc to the fastest pair of drivers; Max Verstappen just beat Mercedes' George Russell to pole position by 0.012 seconds with a 1:32.833 lap time. Leclerc's time was a 1:33.109, over two tenths slower than the Dutchman.

Ferrari didn't bring any notable upgrades to the Circuit of the Americas, while their three nearest rivals, Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren, did. But rather than blaming the car, Leclerc thinks he could have done a better job himself.

In a report published by Ferrari after Sprint Qualifying, Leclerc's overall outlook was mixed: "Not the ideal result, but P3 is not too bad as a starting position for the Sprint Race and we will push to make up some places tomorrow.

"Our pace looked good on the Medium, but on the Soft we didn’t quite have the pace to challenge for P1 today. The lap was a bit scrappy, but overall, the feeling wasn’t great which happens, especially when you’ve had limited running time in practice," said the Monegasque.

With a lack of data so far this weekend, Leclerc hopes to discover more about his and the team's relative pace during the Sprint on Saturday. He continued: "We still don’t have a clear picture of everyone’s race pace so I hope we have a strong Sprint Race as that would be a positive sign for Sunday."

Sainz' time was only three hundredths of a second behind that of his teammate, yet he will start the Sprint race on an entirely different row of the grid. These close margins were something that the Spaniard touched on after the session. He said: "It was a very tight Sprint Qualifying and overall the session wasn’t too bad.

"We did good laps in SQ1 and SQ2 with the Medium tyre, but we missed a bit with the Soft. On the last flying lap in SQ3 it was all about the slightest of details but we still have tomorrow to go at it again," added Sainz.

He expects his race pace to be better than his one-lap pace: "On the race pace I think we could be competitive so I expect an interesting Sprint Race tomorrow where we will fight to gain some positions."

The 2024 United States Grand Prix Sprint commences Saturday 19 October at 19:00 BST (13:00 local time).