Charles Leclerc tops practice in Sepang but warns Ferrari are not the fastest

Here is the funny thing about topping the timesheets: Charles Leclerc knows as well as anyone that a fast Friday afternoon does not tell the whole story. The Ferrari machine looked sharp enough when it mattered in the second session at the Sepang International Circuit, jumping to the top of the monitor after a fourth-place finish in FP1. His teammate Lewis Hamilton kept himself right up there too, collecting a sixth and a fifth across the day's two practices. But do not let the provisional times fool you, because the driver inside the cockpit insists the Scuderia are far from being the team to beat.

That crown, according to the Monegasque, belongs elsewhere. Even after setting the pace, he pointed straight at the competition and singled out Red Bull as a genuine standout. He noted that Isack Hadjar left time on the table with errors in the final sector, while Max Verstappen never even bolted on a set of soft tyres for a proper qualifying simulation. When you look at it that way, the timesheet starts to look a whole lot more complicated.

Then there is the ongoing riddle of the Silver Arrows. Mercedes rolled into Malaysia carrying a heavy batch of upgrades, yet George Russell and Kimi Antonelli could only manage seventh and eighth in FP2 after failing to string together a clean run on the soft compound. Leclerc is wise enough not to write them off, pointing out that they have carried the favourite's tag since the opening round and rarely stay down for long. They do not often get it wrong, and when their new parts start singing, they will be terrifyingly fast.

Beyond the raw speed of the rivals, the tarmac itself is about to chew cars to pieces. The asphalt offered very little grip on opening day, presenting a filthy and slippery surface that caught everyone's attention. Above all else, tyre degradation is so severe that Leclerc called it insane over the radio during the opening session. It is shaping up to be the defining theme of the entire weekend, turning Sunday's Grand Prix into a proper strategic chess match where managing the rubber will dictate who survives.

Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur completely backed up his driver's assessment, noting that this is the first weekend in five or six rounds where the paddock's entire focus has shifted away from normal setups and straight onto pure tyre preservation. The conditions are brutal, the circuit feels entirely new to everyone, and the low-grip sliding means the engineering crew have mountains of data to chew through before the lights go out.