Leclerc believes Mercedes ‘hiding a lot more’ but confident Ferrari is in the mix

Charles Leclerc believes Red Bull and Mercedes are ahead of Ferrari after the first pre-season test in Bahrain, but that the gap is not big despite Mercedes “hiding a lot more.”

Mercedes was the pre-season favorite heading into testing but Red Bull’s new power unit partnership with Ford has surprised its rivals and led to multiple teams highlighting its performance so far. Ferrari had the third-highest mileage of the first test in Bahrain – just three laps shy of the highest total – and was regularly featuring at the top of the times, but Leclerc suggested all of the top teams are trying to raise expectations on each other.

“I think everybody is trying to throw the ball to the other guys,” Leclerc said. “It's normal at that point of the season. Also because it's so difficult to understand.

“It was difficult with the previous generation of cars, but now with the hybrid and especially the electrical engine being so much more powerful, there are so many small tweaks that you can do, and you can hide the real potential of the car in many, many different ways now. So it's very, very difficult for us to understand exactly where we stand.

“What I'm happy about is that we are going through our program. We didn't have any reliability issues so far, and this is a good start. Everything stacks up with what we expected, so that's a good base to then start to work on and to improve.

“I think Red Bull have shown very impressive things power unit-wise since the start of the tests, especially here. Mercedes are showing some very impressive things as well sometimes, but I would say they are hiding a lot more. I would expect those two especially to be a bit ahead of us.

“Then McLaren is a little bit more difficult to understand, but from where I stand now, it's Red Bull, Mercedes in front and then us, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a gap for now.”

While Leclerc says he doesn’t mind the new challenge that the 2026 cars are providing behind the wheel, he predicts there will be a lot of areas that teams will still need to refine even once racing gets underway.

“I expect some chaos," he said. "Overtaking is going to be a big challenge. I think there are still many question marks. Yes, we try to simulate as many situations as possible, but nothing will simulate just the unpredictability that you find yourself in when there's a race start.

“You are not anymore in control of your line, of the way you drive, of your speed traces, because you're a bit in your enemy's hands. But it's the same for everybody.

“There are lots of question marks, and I think the start is one of those as well. We are working a lot on that, just like everybody is, but it's one of those very critical moments of a race and there might be some surprising things in the first part of the season.”