Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took pole position for the opening race of the 2022 Formula One season in Bahrain on Saturday evening.
The Monégasques native set a fastest time of 01:30.558s and speaking following the action he said:
We knew that it was just a matter of time before we were back in the mix and I’d like to thank our whole team for the hard work that everyone has done to put our car back where it belongs. We are all happy with today’s result, but at the same time we are aware that we can’t relax and have to keep pushing because our competitors are strong.
We focused on short runs so far in the weekend in preparation for qualifying and did a lot of high fuel laps during testing, so we have gotten to know the car in different situations and it feels good.
The trickiest part today was putting the tyres in the right window, but at the end I put it all together and it feels really good to be back on pole.
Carlos Sainz in the second Ferrari starts the race from third place with a time of 01:30.687s and speaking following the action he said:
It’s not been an easy weekend for me up until Quali, but we managed to put together a very strong performance this afternoon. Fighting for pole until the very last attempt is good news. The gap at the top has been super narrow all session, so overall I cannot be too disappointed with this first qualifying of the year. Congrats to Charles for this result and to the entire team for giving us such a competitive car. It’s a promising start!
Looking ahead to the race, I think there’s still a bit of work to do from what we saw during the long runs in practice, but we will definitely give our maximum. I can’t wait to race tomorrow.
Mattia Binotto, Team Principal and Managing Director of Scuderia Ferrari said:
We are extremely pleased with today’s performance: we were convinced the potential was there to do well and the fact that both our drivers were in the fight for pole says a lot about the strength of our package – the car, the drivers and everyone who gives their all every day both at the track and back in Maranello.
This pole position is a reward for all the hard work of the entire team and it’s even more important when one considers where we were two years ago.
We have always said that to excel against such strong opponents we have to be perfect and I think, today, as a team we were very good. I know we have the best driver pairing and I feel that was shown to be the case today.