How Ferrari can ‘annoy’ F1 rival Mercedes at Japanese GP

Charles Leclerc sees another opportunity for Ferrari to “annoy” F1 pacesetter Mercedes at the Japanese Grand Prix.

Leclerc and team-mate Lewis Hamilton have taken advantage of Ferrari’s lightning-fast starts to get into the lead ahead of Mercedes at the opening two rounds of the 2026 season in Australia and China.

However, despite making rocket launches off the line, the Ferraris ultimately have lacked the race pace to challenge the superior Mercedes over the course of a grand prix distance.

Mercedes has enjoyed a near-perfect start to the campaign by racking up victories in the first two races, as well as the Shanghai sprint race.

While Leclerc has downplayed Ferrari’s chances of winning this weekend, the Monegasque at least hopes to give Mercedes a headache early on.

"I don’t think it’s as close as maybe people think,” Leclerc said during Thursday’s FIA press conference at Suzuka.

“Obviously the first few races we see lots of fighting between the cars, which is actually quite nice, but as soon as you are a little bit suboptimal with these cars you lose a lot of lap time.

"So, our only chance to stay with them is to annoy them in the first few laps, but as soon as they get free air then they’ve shown their real pace in the last race, and I think there’s still these four or five tenths that we’ve seen throughout these first two races.

"It’s still a significant advantage. But yes, that doesn’t discourage me and again we have some things in the pipeline. We’ve got to focus on ourselves, not trying to overdo it because it’s never good in these situations, and then we’ll see where that brings us.”

Leclerc reiterated the importance of the development battle throughout the 2026 campaign.

“This championship is going to be all about development and the upgrades that each team is going to bring,” Leclerc added.

“For now, we are in an okay-ish place, but of course we’re not here to only do podiums and we want to win races, which at the moment seems very difficult because Mercedes is at a very high level.

“But we are working very hard and especially the people back at the factory are working extremely hard to bring upgrades as soon as possible. I know there are quite a few things coming up soon.

“Whether this is going to make the difference or not, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure the others are not on vacation either, so it’s going to be tough.”