Friday was over and so was the first day of track action at the Abu Dhabi GP. The Scuderia Ferrari faces the last stop on the F1 calendar with an advantage of 38.5 points ahead of McLaren, on the battle both teams held throughout the championship for P3 on the constructors’ standings.

Even though it was not the best of results for the Maranello-based-team drivers, finishing both P8 and P9 on both practice sessions and still ahead of both McLaren drivers, Charles Leclerc assures: “It’s been a positive day”.

Friday in 2021 is all complete ✅#essereFerrari 🔴 #AbuDhabiGP pic.twitter.com/N9ER76nRaY

— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) December 10, 2021

“Especially the race pace has been very strong. And now we have to build up on that, to have a good day tomorrow. There is still a bit of work to do to find the qualifying pace, but I feel like it’s coming together.”

"I actually really enjoyed it. I think it will be better for overtaking too.”

Charles Leclerc is keeping an eye on Lando Norris as the Monegasque arrives with a 4-point-advantage over the Briton in order to conquer the final P5 on the drivers’ standings, and so, Leclerc was very specific on his liking over the layout changes the Yas Marina circuit suffered over the course of the year.

“I quite like the new layout and it was fun to drive. The modifications seem to make it easier to follow the cars ahead, so it appears to be a positive track update.”

“For drivers, Turn 9 is very exciting. I quite liked the old Turn 5/6/7 but it is okay. Turn 9 is very nice and I think Turn 5 will actually help overtaking."

“The track evolution was quite big over the course of the day, but that’s more down to the temperature as it becomes much cooler here in the evenings. This helps us to gain grip. Tyre degradation is quite high but I think our car is reacting well to this circuit so far.”

Carlos Sainz, on the other hand, talked less confident on what was his Friday at the circuit of Yas Marina, saying, for him: “It’s been a challenging day here in Abu Dhabi with the new track layout and surface, making it very different to any other year we’ve driven here in the past.”

“It’s been a very difficult Friday because since FP1 I wasn’t feeling at home in the car and I’ve been chasing the balance the whole day. That’s quite unusual because we’ve been starting on the right foot pretty much every weekend and today, I feel we have a lot of homework to do, going into Saturday.”

However, both Ferrari drivers agreed on something, and that’s the need to work on Friday’s result to be able to deliver and perform on Saturday and then Sunday’s race.

“We will now sit down with the engineers, see where we can improve the car and hopefully find more performance for tomorrow,” the Spaniard concluded.