“Overall the track characteristics here are not fitting very well with our [car], but everything is to play for,” Leclerc said. Leclerc has a win and a second place from the two races so far this season in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and leads the drivers’ championship by 12 points from Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen a further eight points behind. Leclerc has tried the new layout in the Ferrari simulator and said it is “much, much quicker”. “I think the old one would have suited us better,” Leclerc said. Both races so far in 2022 have featured close battles between Leclerc and Verstappen in which the DRS overtaking aid played a large part. In both races, Leclerc played tactically with the DRS detection points to ensure he was behind at key parts of the track and could benefit from the subsequent overtaking zone to repass Verstappen. This will be the first time F1 has raced in Melbourne since 2019. “There are different opinions of what’s good racing,” the Dane said.

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