Charles Leclerc doubts Ferrari had pole potential in Dutch GP qualifying

Charles Leclerc has cast doubt on Ferrari's ability to compete at the front of a Formula 1 qualifying session after the Scuderia locked out the third row at Zandvoort.

Lewis Hamilton set a late effort on Saturday to lift himself from ninth to fifth place on the grid, pushing team-mate Leclerc down to sixth after the Monegasque had finished second in the earlier sprint race.

Despite the strong pace shown across the weekend to that point, Leclerc cast a surprising level of doubt on Ferrari's ability to compete at the front in a single-lap shootout.

"I don't think it's down to changes in the car [between sessions]," said Leclerc. 

"Speaking a little bit with Lando [Norris] and George [Russell], I felt like yesterday they didn't do everything perfect, or the car didn't feel quite right, whereas for me, the car felt quite good yesterday.

"So I knew maybe we had a bit less margin compared to them. And then today we made some mistakes in changing modes, power modes from Q2 to Q3. That put me off a little bit with the feeling I had with the car, and we'll have to look into it. 

"But I don't think the potential for pole position was there anyway."

Leclerc's time was within four-tenths of pole-sitter Norris, but had finished the earlier sprint race just 1.3s shy of Russell. 

Despite his lack of confidence in a single-lap session, Leclerc has far more confidence when it comes to race pace.

"There's definitely a tendency where we seem to be faster in the race than we are in qualifying," he said. 

"Most of the time, qualifying is a bit more of a struggle. Yesterday was a bit of an exception, and we were very strong in qualifying. But otherwise, we always seem to be a bit on the back foot. So we've got to work on that. 

"But as I was saying this morning in the press conference, it's not black and white, and it's not as easy as saying, "Okay, I'll take a little bit from the race and put in qualifying," or vice versa. 

"It's we're trying to make the car as fast as possible, but for the characteristics we have, it works a little bit better in the race than in qualifying. I prefer that way than the other way, but on a track like this, it doesn't help."