Mekis: Charles Leclerc knows how to approach the circuit in Baku

It was last confirmed that Laurent Mekis will replace Franz Toast as head of AlphaTauri next year, but for now the French specialist remains Ferrari’s sporting director and is delighted with the whole team at today’s performance by Charles Leclerc.

Laurent Mekis: “Of course Charles’ pole position is a great result for him and for the team. He really knows how to find a special approach to this circuit, and this allows him to run a circle a little faster than his rivals. He won qualifying in Baku in the previous two years, but it’s also nice that both Ferraris are in the top four.

After the Australian Grand Prix the team worked very hard, although we didn’t earn any points at all in Melbourne, we saw some positive signs and today it was confirmed that we are going in the right direction.

When we talk about the settings, it turns out that only on Sunday can it be said how correctly we found a compromise between the qualifying and race settings. In any case, it is good that we start from pole position on Sunday and then we will see what race pace our car is capable of.

In addition, it is important to emphasize that both Ferrari drivers drove with Red Bull – you can say that the top four were alone today, well ahead of everyone else. It is important that we were able to show such speed, despite the fact that we were able to work on the track for a very short time before qualifying. But we noticeably improved with each race, and now we will continue to analyze the information collected, and tomorrow and Sunday we will see what the balance of power will be in reality.

Now our main task is to increase the race pace, that is what all the team’s efforts are focused on. Of course we understand that Red Bull cars are the most efficient when it comes to DRS, but we are also working on this issue and trying to improve in this area as well.”