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Mercedes are too far ahead for Ferrari to seriously threaten them, despite the scraps between the teams in recent races, says Charles Leclerc.

The W17s finished first and second in the two grands prix so far this year. Andrea Kimi Antonelli won the last round with 25 seconds in hand over Mercedes’ closest rival, despite losing a five-second advantage when the Safety Car was deployed.

Ferrari’s strong performance at the start of races has seen them take the lead early on in both grands prix. However they have been unable to contain the Mercedes, which Leclerc says has a performance advantage of up to half a second per lap.

“I don’t think it’s as close as what maybe people think,” he said. “Obviously seeing the first two races, we see lots of fighting between the cars which is actually quite nice, but as soon as you are a little bit sub-optimal 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, 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. So, it’s still a significant advantage, but that doesn’t discourage me.”

However with at least 20 rounds remaining – depending on whether the cancelled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian grands prix are reinstated, replaced or neither – Leclerc believes Ferrari can bring themselves into contention.

“As everyone is saying, I think this championship is going to be all about development and upgrades that each team is going to bring,” he said. “For now we are in an okay-ish place, but of course we are not here to only do podiums.

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“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 the factory are working extremely hard to bring upgrades as soon as possible.

“I know there’s quite a bit of 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.”

“We’ve got to focus on ourselves,” he added, “not try to overdo [things] because it’s never good in these situations and then we’ll see where that brings us.”

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