Leclerc ‘did not expect’ pole but claims Verstappen still favourite

The Monegasque made it two pole positions in as many weekends at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez as he edged out Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz by 0.067s, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was 0.097s adrift in third. 

But Leclerc, who joked people would not believe him after making it two straight poles, was left shocked after Ferrari’s unexpected pace seemingly came out of nowhere. 

“I did not expect to be on pole today,” Leclerc said. 

“We thought we were lacking quite a bit after FP3. But for some reason once we put everything together it went well and on the new tyres we gained a lot. 

"I'm already focusing on tomorrow's race because we have had many pole positions but we need to convert it into pole position and it's going to be very difficult.

"We will just focus on ourselves. We had a pretty good pace all weekend. I'm not sure if it's enough to challenge for the win but we will try everything in our hands to get it.”

Ferrari’s recent strong starts leave Leclerc confident about his chances of maintaining the lead on the long run down to Turn 1. 

“It’s a very difficult race here,” he explained. “Everything can happen, especially with the cooling, where whichever car behind can do a bit more management. 

"So it can play a bit in our favour but for that we need to be first and starting first here is always tricky to keep that position until the first corner. 

“But we’ve had pretty good starts this year, so I’m confident I can keep that first place into Turn 1, and then we will try and do our best race.” 

However, Leclerc pinpointed Verstappen as being the biggest threat to his hopes of claiming a first win of the season. 

“I mean, this year, clearly Max has been extremely strong on the race-pace. So at the moment it’s Max [who is the favourite],” Leclerc added. 

“We still have a lot of work to do as a team to match them with our race pace.”