Charles Leclerc admits that his second place finish in the Qatar GP came as a surprise and that his Ferrari team was “lucky” to get such a result at a track where McLaren had superior pace.
Leclerc was running fourth when he jumped Oscar Piastri around the safety car pit sequence, and later he moved up a place when Lando Norris had to take a stop and go penalty.
Team mate Carlos Sainz finished sixth after being hampered by a puncture, but the result kept the team in contention for the constructors’ title.
Leclerc admitted that the team had exceeded its own expectations.
“Yes, we did, because to be honest, we knew that it would be very difficult pace-wise,” he said.
“We expected McLaren to be very strong in terms of race pace. We maybe did not expect Max to be that strong, but he was super strong today.
“However, finishing second after such a weekend, where the track characteristics are very far off from the optimal of the track characteristics we need for our car, is a surprise.
“We got a little bit lucky, obviously, on my side. A bit unlucky with Carlos and his puncture. But as a team, it’s been a positive weekend.
“So yes, we exceeded our expectations because coming into the weekend, I kind of expected to lose a bit of points compared to McLaren here. However, we recovered some, so that’s good.”
Leclerc indicated that the team got the maximum out of the package it had.
“I felt like we optimised yesterday and today,” he said. “We knew that it wasn’t going to be our strongest weekend, but we decided to just focus on ourselves, and try to do what was the best possible result for us.
“And I think we achieved that very well. We should be happy. Then we of course need to look at what we can do in the future to be faster on those kind of tracks. But yeah, this weekend we did work very well as a team.”
The only negative was that he lost the used of his drinks bottle before the start.
“I did not drink, but I honestly, I don’t think it was that much of an issue for this race. Last year it would have been a really, really big issue.
“I think I wouldn’t have finished the race without my drink, but this year it was actually pretty, pretty chill.
“So yeah, in terms of dehydration, it wasn’t bad, but it was quite physical in the corners just because we had no saving to do today.
“There was basically no saving. It was just flat out pushing from the first lap to the last lap, which is quite enjoyable as a driver. I don’t think any of us drivers had our heads straight in the fast corners at the end of the race. It was very physical.”
Leclerc remains positive about the team’s prospects at the Abu Dhabi finale.
“To be honest, I haven’t even seen the numbers yet. So we’ve got to wait and see. But I feel like on paper, it should be a bit more positive than Qatar was.
“Again, today we’ve been quite lucky, but without what happened to Lando, we would have been very, very far off. And without the Safety Car, we would have been very far off. In terms of race pace, we weren’t fast.
“Abu Dhabi should be better for us. We’ll wait and see. But it’s not too many points between us. So we’ve just got to focus on ourselves and try to maximise everything. And hopefully we’ll bring back the title to Maranello.”
