Charles Leclerc spent the winter telling anyone who asked that he was worried about the 2026 Formula 1 regulations. Walking into the pre-race press conference at Suzuka, the Ferrari driver admitted that two races of actual competition had forced him to revise that view — at least for now.
"Honestly, I was a bit skeptical," Leclerc said. "I mean, I was very skeptical at the beginning of the year and after testing. I had some particular expectations going into the year that weren't very good about racing. I've been positively surprised."
The Monegasque was careful to qualify the endorsement. He sits at the front of the grid and benefits from a clean track in most stints, which shapes his view of the racing product in a way that is not necessarily generalisable to drivers fighting in the midfield train. But the core message was one of relief rather than resignation.
"At least for us in the front, it's actually been a lot nicer than what I thought," Leclerc said. "Surely you've got some of the overtakes that are artificial, just like it was the case also with the DRS sometimes last year. However, there are also many other overtakes where it's actually on the limit — and where you end up in a similar state of the battery at the same point for different circumstances — and which makes it actually quite fun."
Where Leclerc did not soften his position was qualifying. The 2026 energy management rules have transformed how drivers approach a flying lap, and Leclerc wants them changed before they strip away the thing he values most about the sport.
"Whatever solution that helps us to push at the maximum those cars — because that's what I love," he said. "That's what I love about these sports really: when you get to Q3 and that you have the maximum pressure on you to deliver at best at that moment and that you try and do a lap that you haven't done before. At the moment this is not possible because every time you do something that you haven't done before, then the car is just trying to adapt to it, and it makes you lose more than what you gain."
Leclerc also offered a measured note on how teams are framing their own preferences in the wider rule discussion. His implication was that the paddock's consensus is softer than it sometimes appears in public.
"Whenever there are these kind of changes, everybody's pushing a little bit its agenda," Leclerc said.
On Ferrari's competitive position heading into the Japanese Grand Prix, he was blunt. The Scuderia has been "okayish" through the first races, with the acknowledgement that Mercedes remains a step ahead on pure one-lap pace and that Suzuka's long straights were unlikely to flip the order.
"I don't see any characteristics that would change drastically what we've seen in the first two races," Leclerc said. "There's still some very long back straights where we know Mercedes is going to be extremely strong."
Pressed on the new energy recharge adjustments that would apply to qualifying at Suzuka, Leclerc damped expectations that it would close the gap to George Russell's Mercedes in any meaningful way.
"I don't think it will be a game changer," Leclerc said. "I think it will be pretty similar, apart from for the driver, where maybe a little bit less lift and coast — which is, I think, a good thing."
Leclerc's relatively moderate assessment sits in contrast with the sharper criticisms voiced by Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, whose 2026 public comments have run from disapproval to open lobbying. It also contrasts with The Race's warning that driver frustration with the rules is structural. Leclerc's verdict — "positively surprised" at the racing, unhappy with qualifying — is the closest thing to a middle-ground position at the sharp end of the grid.
The longer passage of his remarks revealed something else: a Ferrari driver still defining himself by the team's long arc rather than its short-term form. Asked about his future at Maranello, Leclerc fell back into a now-familiar cadence.
"Ferrari is a family and a team that I've always loved and dreamed of driving for since I'm a kid, and this hasn't changed one bit since I joined the team in 2019," he said. "So the passion is still there. Then, of course, the will to win — and we want to win eventually and I want to win. It's been so many years obviously working with the team to try and come back to the top. It's been a good step forward this year. We are just not yet where we want to be, and we'll keep pushing towards that direction."
What to watch next: whether the qualifying tweaks landing in Miami bring back the "maximum push" Q3 Leclerc has campaigned for, and whether Ferrari's development rate narrows the gap to Mercedes over the European leg of the season.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/leclerc-2026-positively-surprised-qualifying-push-verdict). Visit for full coverage.*
