“He’s just super excited”: Charles Leclerc plays down…

Charles Leclerc believes Lewis Hamilton isn't in a "different place" at Ferrari compared to his first year with the team. Instead, he argues he's simply excited as the duo head into a bout of new regulations.

Hamilton's first season in red was a disappointing one as the seven-time world champion struggled with his Italian machinery. It was the saddest we'd seen the Briton as weekend after weekend he fought against the ground effect characteristics of the SF-25. But with a new set of regulations, Hamilton was on cloud nine as he answered questions from the press today.

"It's massively different to the first year," Hamilton said on how it felt starting his second year with the Scuderia. "And a much nicer feeling having spent a year at the team, understanding the culture, understanding ways, finding ways of working together. And I think we're in a good place now together as a team. And I feel very gelled with the team today. So much happier."

But Leclerc, with more years under his belt at Ferrari than his team-mate, is being careful to temper his expectations despite what seemed like an impressive bout of testing in Bahrain earlier this month.

"I'm quite neutral going into this season," he told the media ahead of the season-opener. "I've had quite a few years with the team now, and I know what it's like. To be driving for Ferrari is very, very special, but with that also comes a lot of noise and sometimes expectations that don't really reflect the real picture so I don't really have any expectations for now.

"I just go day by day. I try to do the best possible job and I hope that this means that on Sunday we are here celebrating the first win of the season but if not, we'll take it from there and try to work from that."

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari (Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images)

He then turned his focus to Hamilton's positivity so far this season.

"Whether I see Lewis in a different place, I don't. I think he's just super excited. He was super excited to join the team last year, and he's super excited for these new cars to arrive, just like I am. So there's a lot of excitement really, to start this first race on the right foot and a lot of work also behind the scenes from both of us, but also for the whole team to try and arrive as ready as possible for this season.

"It's going to be an interesting race because over the years with the cars we've had before, which were a little bit more traditional, every time we did a change of regulation, we tested every scenario before getting to the first race.

"With these kinds of cars there are still quite a few scenarios that are unknown, like safety car restarts, all these kinds of things that you cannot really reproduce that might give us a few surprises so I'm looking forward to that."

Ferrari will get its first reference points when it turns a wheel in Friday practice in Melbourne. And come qualifying, we'll see if Leclerc was sensible in staying neutral.