Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were encouraged by how close Ferrari was to McLaren at the season-opening F1 Bahra൩in Grand Prix.

Leclerc qualified an impressive fourth in Bahr💜ain, just a tenth shy of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas.

The Monegasque didn’t have the race pace to maintain fourth over Lando Norris and Ser🍸gio Perez, ulti⛦mately finishing sixth.

Carlos Sainz finishe🧸d eighth on his Ferrari debut, just a second behind McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo. 

“It is encouraging because last year I remember that with that🌼 car I passed Charles fairly ♕easy, so I remember how big the difference between the McLaren and Ferrari was and how close I was to overtaking Ricciardo at the end,” Sainz said.

“I think I had much better pace than Daniel there towards the end of the race, we were catching at more than half a second per lap, and there’s positive siꦿgns. There’s encouragement, there’s a big step compared to last year and now it’s a matter of keep refining the details, keep working hard back in Maranello and keep improving. 

“We’ve done certainly a very good step and now we want to take the next steps but as Mattia said this year is going 🗹to be more focused on next year. But I’m encouraged. Honestܫly I’m happy with what I’ve seen today, I’m happy with my feeling with the car to be a first race and I can see a positive start.”

Leclerc was knocked out in Q2 and finished tenth in last season’s Bahrain Grand Prix - a 🍸stark contrast to this year's Q3 appearance and top-six finish on race day.

“Yeah if I look at where we we✅re last year at exactly the same place there has been a good 💎progress,” Leclerc added.

“So surely we want to be fighting for the win very, very☂ soon but realistically and h♔onestly we’ve done a great job to catch that and now be closer to McLaren at least and fighting with them in the race, so let’s see in Imola.”