"Ferrari have been pushing like crazy", claims Leclerc after his brilliant performance in Bahrain qualifying

Having set the third quickest lap time in qualifying at the Bahrain Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc has praised his team for having "pushed like crazy" to debut the heavily-upgraded floor that has brought more performance to the SF25.

Ferrari brought a new floor to Bahrain which seemingly added more performance to the SF25 as Charles Leclerc managed to secure P3 on the grid for tomorrow's Bahrain race.

Elaborating on his performance in the Sakhir qualifying session, Leclerc said that the improvement he achieved compared to the previous three rounds was down to "a lot of work."

"It was really good, but I don't think today's performance relies on my record on this track. I think it's the result of a lot of work. At the beginning of the season, we obviously weren't where we wanted to be and since two or three races I've gone in an interesting direction setup-wise, which seems to help me to extract a bit more out of the car.

"That's what I'm trying to do every weekend. For now, it seems to be better and better, which is a good sign for the future. I'm happy with the lap. It was very tricky to put everything together, but I think I did so. There wasn't much more inside the car. Again, I think as George mentioned, I did not expect to be so close to pole position — just like him. But tomorrow is going to be a bit more of a challenge.

Pushed on to reveal what he expects from tomorrow's race, Leclerc suggested that McLaren might enjoy a superior tyre management on a track where thermal degradation.

"Honestly, McLaren seems to be extremely good with tyre management and more specifically the overheating of the tyres. We've seen it in FP3 — I think everybody was struggling a lot — but Oscar put a lap in that was very impressive. I think tomorrow in the race there will be lots of that, so I don't think we expect to challenge the McLarens, but we might be pretty close with the Mercedes, also with the Red Bulls.

"So it's going to be an interesting race. We all have different tyres. A good start will obviously be essential, especially with high temperatures like this, to have clean air plays a big role.

Asked about the changes to his car weekend, Leclerc said the the new floor that Ferrari debuted at this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix contributed to the Scuderia's improved form in Manama.

"Yeah, the team has done a really, really good job. We've all pushed quite a lot in the last few weeks because we've been struggling with performance. I know that at the factory they've been pushing like crazy to try and bring this floor a bit earlier on, and that definitely made the difference.

"Because if I look at the gap with P4, it's not that much and I'm pretty sure that without the floor I wouldn't be P3. So that's already one position won. I'm curious to see what it will do tomorrow. However, it's probably not the best track to extract the maximum out of this new upgrade, but in the next few weekends we shall see more of it."