Apart from the obvious aspects of the Bahrain GP qualifying, there were some surprise features as well. The unsurprising aspect was the Red Bull men locking out the front row, which was a fair assumption given the RB19’s superiority. However, perhaps not the biggest surprise was Ferrari’s performance in the qualifying. The two Ferrari men, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, locked out the second row. This performance by Ferrari was a surprise feature only because of the team’s pre-season testing and free practice performances. This surprisingly improved performance made Max Verstappen take a subtle dig at Leclerc during the post-qualifying interview.

Ferrari’s performance had been subpar up until the first test of the season opener. However, Ferrari’s qualifying result changed the outlook toward the prancing horse. This made both Verstappen and his teammate Sergio Perez, talk about a tactic called sandbagging to the media including Planet F1. For the unaware, sandbagging is when teams don’t showcase their true potential until needed.

During interviews, both Red Bull men accused Ferrari of doing so and Verstappen even joked about it with Leclerc. Perez stated the accusations and said, “I think they were sandbagging a bit through the first days of testing and during the weekend. They’re definitely there, they’re very strong, so I will expect them to be in the fight for tomorrow’s race.”

During Leclerc’s interview, Verstappen interrupted him and said, “Maybe you found a sandbag in the car?” However, the Monegasque brushed the comments off with a smile.

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Despite the surprise performance, Ferrari did leave its fans a little disgruntled with a strategic error in qualifying. However, Leclerc is focusing on the positives.

Charles Leclerc focusing on the positives despite the subtle dig by Max Verstappen after the Bahrain qualifying

The Monegasque and his team might’ve been accused of sandbagging by the Red Bull men but Leclerc is only looking at the positives. During the post-qualifying interview, Leclerc revealed his surprise and positive outlook.

Leclerc said, “We found a lot of performance in qualifying, I mean a lot of performance, we were in the fight, which is something that I probably did not expect, so it’s a good surprise.”

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However, Leclerc does not want to keep this performance a secret and feels a need to find the reason. “To tell you where we found the performance, I’m not really sure. So we need to look into that,” he added.

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The race will reveal further if the performance was a fluke or if the SF23 is a competitive car. Regardless, Leclerc and Ferrari need to find the answers.