Following a surprise podium finish at the Spanish Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has noted that while he had expected a strong race pace from his SF21, he did not think that a podium finish would be possible at Barcelona.
Ferrari made slight improvements to the qualifying pace of its SF25 at Barcelona which enabled Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to qualify fifth and seventh on the grid respectively.
The Italian outfit had expected to display an even better race pace given their form swing between qualifying and races, and they really had the upper hand over Mercedes while Leclerc matched race winner Oscar Piastri’s pace at certain times of the 66-lap Spanish Grand Prix.
The Monegasque looked on for fourth after a two-stop strategy, but the safety car restart opened new opportunities for Leclerc. Max Verstappen had a huge moment at the restart, and Leclerc was able to to pick off the reigning champion into Turn 1.
As for his team-mate Lewis Hamilton, things looked good at the start as he managed to pick off his his former team-mate George Russell. However, he struggled to keep his tyres alive and was asked by Ferrari to let Leclerc past early on in the race.
The seven-time F1 champion played a long game, but an undercut strategy from Mercedes saw Russell overtake Hamilton after the second round of pit stops. After the safety car restart, he was even passed on merit by Hulkenberg, his Ferrari just not working for him today.
Speaking of his race, Leclerc said: “Yesterday, I knew that I was sacrificing qualifying in order to have a better race on Sunday, but I didn’t expect to find myself standing on the podium, so I’m happy about that.
“The first two stints were really positive today, the last stint on the Medium was a bit more tricky, but then we had the Safety Car that gave us the opportunity to fit Soft tyres again and we took advantage of it.
“The Safety Car helped us. Basically, Max had no tyres except the hard tyre, which put him in a bad situation. We took advantage of it.”
Pressed on to comment on his battle with Max Verstappen the Monegasque stated: “On the contact, I don’t think there’s anything special. Max did a mistake out of the last corner, I went side by side. He tried to bring me onto the dirty side of the track, as I would have done, which is normal.
“Then once I had the upper hand in terms of speed, I tried to take the slipstream a little bit. On the first move, I was willing to move a tiny bit. On the second move, he wasn’t.
“That is the difference of [whether we make] contact or not. At the end of the day that’s racing – I don’t think there’s any big problem in it.”
Signing off with a word for Ferrari’s current competitiveness, Leclerc noted: “We still have a lot of work to do and are not yet as fast as we want to be, but now we head home to reset and push to come back stronger in the coming races.”
F1GP Spain
