Following five races that have been "a bit of a disaster", Charles Leclerc is hoping for a clean race and some decent points.

Having dismissed media speculation over unrest within the Maranello outfit, Leclerc simply wants to get on with the job in hand.

While the media, particularly in Italy, has a certain reputation, the fact is that the Monegasque's strong lead at the start of the season has been eroded by a series of technical failures and strategic catastrophes.

Little wonder that he heads into this weekend in the hope that there are no repeats.

"I think we are all three very, very close, so it was an exciting qualifying," said the youngster after missing out on pole by just 0.029s.

"In the last lap I struggled a little bit bringing the tyres back after such a long time in the pits," he admitted. "Max was just a little bit quicker, so congrats to him.

"Hopefully we'll have an exciting race tomorrow," he continued. "I just want to have a clean race... obviously there's been five races that it's been a bit of a disaster on my side so I just hope that everything will go clean, and that we can finally score the points that we deserve."

"When you look back and you see how close it is, you go back to the lap and find places where you've left that tenth of a second that could have given us pole," added teammate, Carlos Sainz, who was just 0.082s off Verstappen's best.

"I know where the lap time is," he insisted. "I just wish I could have done it a little bit better. But I'm sure these two guys also know more or less where they lost it or where they gained it.

"The good thing is that we put a good lap there at the end of Q3. It wasn't easy because the tyres were very cold after the red flag. Trusting the car into Turn 1, into Turn 3 wasn't the easiest," he admitted.