Leclerc believes Mercedes ‘hiding massive amount’ of performance as he stays ‘cautious’ over Ferrari’s prospects

Charles Leclerc is opting to stay “really cautious” about Ferrari’s prospects despite the squad enjoying “positive” reliability during the first pre-season test in Bahrain, with the Monegasque suggesting that while performance remains an unknown, Mercedes are “hiding a massive amount”.

The Scuderia achieved the third highest lap count throughout the three-day event – their tally of 420 beaten only by McLaren and Williams on 422 each – while Leclerc also topped the timesheets in the morning session on Day 2.

Quizzed on Day 3 about whether it felt like Ferrari were in a good place at the moment, given their extensive mileage, Leclerc smiled: “Yeah, it’s only a feeling though!

“For now I’ll stay really cautious, because if last year you had only two or three things you could play with on the car to hide your potential, maybe now it’s 10 or 15 because with this new system there are so many ways you can really hide your performance more than previous years. So in terms of performance itself, it’s very difficult to know.

“In terms of reliability we are looking good, and that’s true and that is a positive. But, at the end, performance is – as much as reliability – also a very important thing that we need to excel at, and we don’t really know where we are for now.”

Pushed on whether this meant that he felt some of the team’s rivals – such as Red Bull and Mercedes – might not be showing their true performance yet, Leclerc suggested that this may be the case in certain instances.

“I think Red Bull showed a little bit more than Mercedes and they’ve been very impressive,” the 28-year-old said. “I think Mercedes is hiding a massive amount, and only time will tell how much they’ve been hiding.”

Ferrari and the rest of their competitors will have their next chance to gain further mileage with their 2026 cars during the second pre-season test in Bahrain, which takes place across February 18-20.