Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari is more competitive than the first four races of the 2019 F1 season have indicated.

The team lies 74 points adrift of Mercedes in the constructors championship after their rivals finished one-two in the first four races. However Leclerc believes they had the potential to score more and said “performance-wise, there is more to come.”

“I don’t think it is as bad as the championship looks,” he said. “Obviously we have had two opportunities, once I did a mistake, on the other one we had an issue that cost us a better result. But overall I think the performance is there we just need to try to put everything together in most of the occasions to be using our full potential.”

Ferrari ran strongly in pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya, the venue for this weekend’s race, but Leclerc believes the extent of their advantage over Mercedes at that point was exaggerated.

“I think Mercedes were not that far [behind] even in testing in Barcelona. The last day [was] the only day where they actually pushed a little bit and in the last laps they did a very similar lap time to ours.

“So I don’t think they were ever very far away, and we don’t even know how much they pushed in the last day of testing. It’s not right to say that we were a lot for ahead after testing.

“Hopefully the improvements we’ve brought here put us a step forward and then we’ll see for the rest of the season. Normally Barcelona is quite representative track for the performance of the car so hopefully we’re strong here.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2019 F1 season