Scuderia Ferrari HP will line up on the grid at Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix which gets underway tomorrow at 14 local (7 CEST), on the second and third rows.

Charles Leclerc starts from fourth spot, with team-mate Lewis Hamilton right behind him in sixth, the Englishman lapping in a time very close to that of the Monegasque driver.

Both drivers comfortably made the cut in the first part, using just one set of Soft tyres, just as they then did in Q2. It meant that for Q3, they both had two sets of new Softs available. On his first attempt, Leclerc stopped the clocks in 1’29"434 which put him fifth, while Hamilton posted a 1’29"567. With all drivers on their final set of tyres, not all of them improved, partly because the temperature had dropped and the wind picked up. However, Charles did find something extra and got down to 1’29"405, to take fourth place, ahead of Lando Norris. Lewis’ previous time was good enough for sixth place.

Tonight, the team will prepare for the race, which will be run over 53 laps (307.471 km). Just as at the first two races of the season, the aim will be to get the very best result possible, making the most of any opportunities that present themselves, to bring home as many points as possible, maybe going for a third consecutive podium since Australia.

Charles Leclerc: I don’t think there was much more in that final lap, even though I lost some time with the snap in sector two. Q1 and Q2 looked quite good, but our competitors seem to make an extra step in Q3 and we have to investigate what they are doing differently, in order to close the gap.

If we have a strong start, it’s a positive, then we have to focus on staying in front, which will be tough because we will have to keep battling with our opponents from start to finish. I will give it my all.

Lewis Hamilton: Qualifying was okay today. It wasn’t where I’d hope to be but the car felt decent at times and there were some encouraging signs.

There’s still a lot of performance to unlock, we’ve made progress, and I’m hopeful we can fight forward tomorrow, but we know there’s still a significant gap to the cars ahead and plenty of work to do.

Fred Vasseur: At the moment, we are still going through the learning process regarding how to approach qualifying and how to improve from Q1 to Q3, without being too aggressive. It’s not just about energy management or about pure performance: it’s about how to extract the best from the car. That can sometimes be counterintuitive for the driver, and we will have to fully understand why we had a better Q2 than Q3. Tonight, we will focus on tomorrow’s race as it is Sunday when the points are given out. So, let’s hope we get a good start, choose the right strategy and then see what we can do. So far, our race pace has been solid, let’s see how many points we can score tomorrow.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Suzuka here.