Charles Leclerc hopes Ferrari can “annoy” Mercedes at Formula 1‘s Japanese Grand Prix despite a “significant” deficit to the Silver Arrows so far in 2026.
The Brackley-based squad has emerged as the runaway leaders of F1’s latest era.
George Russell leads the Drivers’ championship with team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli in second, after winning his maiden F1 race at the Shanghai International Circuit, two weeks ago.
Two consecutive wins and a Sprint victory, in the opening two race weekends, later Mercedes have a commanding lead over its rivals in the Constructors’.
That said, the Maranello-based outfit look like the only ones who can keep pace with Mercedes – at least at the start.
Ferrari’s 2026 power unit has allowed it to get into the optimum start configuration. However, despite beating the Mercedes off the line, the SF-26 soon loses steam in terms of race pace.
Leclerc believes the Scuderia to be at least five tenths off the pace of the W17, and hence, not optimistic about putting an end to the Silver Arrows’ winning streak at Japan, this weekend.
“I don’t think it’s as close as maybe people think,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
But the Monegasque has an idea or two about how to “annoy” the duo of Russell and Antonelli at the Suzuka International Circuit.
“Obviously the first few races we see lots of fighting between the cars, which is actually quite nice, but as soon as you are a little bit suboptimal with these cars you lose a lot of lap time.
“So, our only chance to stay with them is to annoy them in the first few laps.
“But as soon as they get free air then they’ve shown their real pace in the last race, and I think there’s still these four or five tenths that we’ve seen throughout these first two races.
“It’s still a significant advantage. But yes, that doesn’t discourage me and again we have some things in the pipeline.
“We’ve got to focus on ourselves, not trying to overdo it because it’s never good in these situations, and then we’ll see where that brings us.”
Charles Leclerc details “tough” road ahead to challenge Mercedes in F1 2026
Ferrari isn’t going to rest on its laurels, and Leclerc has insisted that the team isn’t happy with just podium finishes this season.
Looking forward to the remainder of the 2026 campaign, the Monegasque highlighted how the fate of the championship will rest in the favour of the one that is able to out-develop its rivals.
“This championship is going to be all about development and the upgrades that each team is going to bring,” he added.
“For now, we are in an okay-ish place, but of course we’re not here to only do podiums and we want to win races, which at the moment seems very difficult because Mercedes is at a very high level.
“But we are working very hard and especially the people back at the factory are working extremely hard to bring upgrades as soon as possible. I know there are quite a few things coming up soon.
“Whether this is going to make the difference or not, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure the others are not on vacation either, so it’s going to be tough.”
Ferrari is set to utilise the month of April, now rendered race-less owing to the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs, to exhausts its quota of filming days in 2026.
Naturally, Leclerc would hope to get some good mileage and data out of these sessions to allow the team to understand and upgrade its SF-26 package in time to stop Mercedes’ dominance.
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