Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari remains in contention for Formula 1 victory at the United States Grand Prix despite falling short of Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in qualifying.
Leclerc took fourth on the grid, just 0.09 seconds away from team-mate Carlos Sainz as the Spaniard clinched third for Sunday's race at Austin.
The Monegasque did not think the early end to Q3 - caused by George Russell's crash at Turn 19 - would have made too much difference to his position, feeling that third was the maximum achievable result and cited a "limitation" with Ferrari's SF-24 in the opening sector.
He said this made it difficult to approach Norris and Verstappen in qualifying, but explained that this was much less of an issue in race trim. Further to this, Leclerc reckoned that a victory remained possible for Ferrari if it could repeat its sprint race pace - in which Sainz took second on the last lap from Norris.
"None of us were capable of going to fight with the top two. They were too fast, but that's also what we expected as a team," Leclerc explained.
"The first sector in qualifying yesterday and today, we knew we have a limitation in our car at the moment. And none of the set-up options we thought of would cure that issue.
"But in the race, we have a lot less of that issue. And so that's why I'm a bit more optimistic for the race.
"If we see the same race pace as [Saturday] morning, for sure the race win is possible. I think McLaren and Red Bull most likely will do a step forward in terms of car set-up and we need to see how much of a step forward that is on lap times."
Leclerc explained that the tyre degradation that Ferrari was experiencing was "quite balanced" and that he had learned from being over-conservative in his sprint-race battle with Sainz that he could take more out of the tyres.
"As a driver, you can play with whether you want to have front degradation or rear degradation," he explained.
"It depends a little bit on how you drive, and we'll see how everybody manages tyres tomorrow.
"For sure, [pushing earlier] depends also on our strategy and how many laps we need to do in the first stint. I've learned from [the sprint], which most likely was not the ideal scenario for me [getting passed by Sainz], but we'll try to make it ideal [in the race]."
On Ferrari's limitations, he added: "[In sector one] it's more the bottoming and the actual bumps on the track which offset us a lot and we have so much, we are touching quite a lot, so this makes it very tricky for us. But it's not the bouncing this time."
