Charles Leclerc has little hope for Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix after showing a marked lack of interest in practice and qualifying at Zandvoort.
Leclerc finished sixth on the grid for Sunday’s race, which he thought was the best he could hope for. And as for the race, his best hope was to hold onto that spot until the finish.
The dry, bright conditions required for the race itself seemed to breathe new life into the SF-24, which looked distinctly alive from the moment the lights went out and Leclerc took the lead from Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.
“I knew the first lap was an opportunity for us to gain a position or two,” Leclerc said. “I made the pass and everything went well, but I didn’t know that later on we would have the speed to catch him.”
Leclerc spent the first part of the race behind George Russell in his Mercedes before pitting before the end of lap 24. Russell responded immediately but still trailed Leclerc.
Leclerc failed to keep Russell at the back and when Oscar Piastri pitted from the lead and followed Russell, he gained another position, but now on newer, faster tyres.
The McLaren was the fastest car this weekend, but Piastri couldn’t find a way to overtake Leclerc over the remaining 38 laps, and the latter ended up on the podium alongside Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.
“It’s not often that I say I’m happy with P3, but today I’m very happy with what the team did on such a difficult weekend,” he smiled in his post-race media interview.
“I struggled in every session after FP1, but I was able to pull it all together when it mattered most,” he said. “I found the pace I needed, executed my strategy perfectly, and weakened and left my opponents behind.”
Leclerc said he hoped the incident would be a turning point for the team, which has struggled since a floor upgrade introduced in Spain failed to deliver the performance gains hoped for.
“We had three or four races where we did a lot of experimentation to understand what the fundamental problems with our car were in the medium term,” he explained.
“We’re going to have an upgrade soon, and hopefully that will help us and help close the gap,” he said. “But until we have that upgrade, I’ve always said our priority is just to limit the damage.
“Today we were aiming for P6 and realistically I think that’s what we’re fighting for,” he admitted. “But after three or four laps the speed was there and I was able to get P3. It was a nice surprise.”
But while he was delighted with the recovery, the question of why the car behaved differently on Saturday and Sunday was a mystery to everyone at Ferrari.
“The biggest question is why we were down 9/10 yesterday and suddenly we’re pretty strong today,” he said. “The car is exactly the same, but yesterday was crazy hard and today was strong.
“These are the kinds of things we have to do,” he argued. “As much as we analyze all the bad surprises we have during the season, we also have to understand when we have good things.
“I don’t think there’s an explanation for it as a team right now,” he admitted. “It’s a great result, I’m really happy to be on the podium, I think it’s a really nice surprise.
“But we need to understand how to get the best performance more often,” he argued. “Now the upgrades [scheduled to be introduced next week in Monza] Please help us take it one step further.”
Today’s result was also unexpected for Leclerc’s team-mate Carlos Sainz, who started tenth on the grid and climbed to fifth by the end of the race.
“It was a bit of a surprise to me, I won’t lie,” he said. “I never expected to be able to overtake Red Bull and Mercedes on a track like this, but the truth is that our pace was really, really strong today.
“From the moment I lapped the grid I felt very at home in the car and thought at least we had a chance to make a comeback. So yeah, I enjoyed it.”
“Points are awarded on Sunday, so we prefer cars that can attack on Sunday, but we have to find the right balance and balance between qualifying and the race.”
