If you aren’t aware, Charles Leclerc holds one of the most unwanted records in the history of Formula 1. He lost out on a race win after starting in pole position on 12 consecutive occasions. However, back when this stat was highlighted, he changed the narrative and looked at the brighter picture highlighting securing pole positions was no cakewalk. However, no matter what the king of Saturdays says, he can’t hide Ferrari’s lack of race pace. This has been made evident again after the Ferrari man secured a front-row start for the upcoming Saudi Arabian GP race but made an honest prediction.

The P2 in qualifying means Leclerc will start a race from the front row for the 7th consecutive race. However, as we all know, he has not won a race since the 2022 Austria GP. Will he break another unwanted streak in Jeddah? Highly unlikely! Unlikely, based on Leclerc’s own admissions, who, after the qualifying session, highlighted how the Ferrari SF-24 is still lacking in places as the reliability issues drag on.

As per FIA’s transcript of the post-qualifying presser, Leclerc revealed, “Well, it’s good to be starting on the front row. However, today I didn’t really find the right feeling with the car. For some reason, with the new tyres, we didn’t have the car in the right place, which I hope that for tomorrow it will improve a little bit. For some reason, we had quite a lot of oversteer and just the rear is not quite ready. So in Q3, we tried something different. We went for a prep lap, which didn’t help at all. And then in the second lap, I put everything together and I don’t think there was much more. But today, the feeling wasn’t as good as what I had, what I was expecting, considering yesterday.”

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He suffered because of the car’s reliability and its output with the soft compounds even during the Bahrain GP. Heading into the race, the Monegasque would hope for a better output from his car as he won’t have anything else to worry about except his race pace. However, it’s the race pace where Ferrari has been suffering for years now and that’s exactly where Red Bull’s strength lies and even Max Verstappen knows it.

Max Verstappen is confident about the Saudi Arabian GP race after securing his 34th pole ahead of Charles Leclerc

The Red Bull man has embarrassingly won more races when Leclerc starts on pole position than the Monegasque himself. This exact scenario highlights where the difference between the two teams lies. Ferrari is incredible over one lap and Leclerc has showcased it on multiple occasions. The Red Bull challenger lacks that oomph over one lap but is excellent over a distance, which is exactly why Verstappen wins races with such huge margins.

Speaking about the upcoming race, this is precisely what the Dutchman highlighted even though he grabbed the pole with a margin of just 0.3s from Leclerc.

“It will be again very, very tight, I think that [qualifying] is probably where other people are probably a bit better than us, over one lap. Our car probably comes a bit more alive in the long run,” he told the media. “But when we went into the long runs, it looks again quite nice, so quite happy with that.”

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Sure, Ferrari is still in its revival mode after conceding a position in 2023 compared to 2022. However, the Italian team hasn’t shown any signs of closing the gap to Red Bull and seems to still be struggling, as admitted by Leclerc. Let’s see how they progress in due course.