(Motorsports news) The Monegasque is optimistic about his chances despite being powerless to stop Verstappen from storming to yet another sprint victory since he was able to match his pace once he got into clear air.

Crucial, in his opinion, to his prospects of preventing Red Bull from winning is to put Verstappen under pressure, which he believes is likely to happen.

Verstappen has been virtually unbeatable thus far this year; when asked why he felt that way, Leclerc responded, “Just the sprint race, we were a little bit closer to what we normally see.”

“Max didn’t seem to be happy with his car during the sprint race, so we’ll have to wait and see how much better he gets with it.

However, we made some adjustments on our end. We’re also optimistic that we made progress, so we’ll see.

“I think you can always apply a little bit more pressure with strategy if we maintain the same speed as we did in the sprint. That’s what I hope comes to pass. There’s a decent chance because we have the two vehicles in front.”

Running close to the Red Bull in foul air particularly hindered Leclerc, so he believed that the sprint gap, where he ended 3.371 seconds behind Verstappen, was not really indicative of the capability of their cars.

Leclerc stated after considering the two cars’ pace over the course of the 19-lap race: “I think we were pretty similar on that.” Max may have gained the advantage and moved away a little bit more in the final two or three laps.

“Aside from that, though, I was merely having some minor issues with the contaminated air. I would drop to 2.2s or 2.3s if I was approaching 1.8s or 1.7s, and then I would gradually recover. The main issue I was having was bad air.

“We probably could have put him under a little more pressure on that first lap if I had the DRS, but we didn’t.”

“So we need to look into that to try and make sure that we keep the DRS if we are behind and we pull away if we are in front.”

Also read: Renault’s F1 troubles have showed about failures in the works team