Charles Leclerc says he would have signed up for a second place within the Qatar Grand Prix forward of the race after being shocked by Ferrari’s skill to take factors off McLaren.
Max Verstappen held of Lando Norris in an in depth struggle for almost all of Sunday’s race, with Leclerc working third after a number of security automotive intervals. Norris then obtained a penalty that dropped him out of competition and after beating Oscar Piastri to second place, Leclerc was delighted to shut the hole within the constructors’ championship to 21 factors.
“Truthfully, I might have signed right away if I had a paper that advised me that we are going to end second after a weekend like this, particularly on a monitor like this, as a result of our automotive traits will not be becoming very properly with this monitor,” Leclerc mentioned. “We knew it was going to be a really troublesome weekend in comparison with the McLaren, however on the finish, we managed to take some factors away from them. So the struggle can be all the way in which to the final race in Abu Dhabi subsequent week.
“Sure, we did (exceed expectations) as a result of to be sincere, we knew that it will be very troublesome pace-wise. We anticipated McLaren to be very robust when it comes to race tempo. We possibly didn’t count on Max to be that robust, however he was tremendous robust.
“Nonetheless, ending second after such a weekend, the place the monitor traits are very far off from the optimum we’d like for our automotive, is a shock.
“We acquired a bit of bit fortunate, clearly on my facet. A bit unfortunate with Carlos and his puncture. However as a crew, it’s been a constructive weekend. So sure, we exceeded our expectations as a result of coming into the weekend, I type of anticipated to lose a factors in comparison with McLaren right here. Nonetheless, we recovered some, in order that’s good.”
One of many causes Leclerc believes Ferrari shocked itself was by accepting it was unlikely to be overly aggressive and never worrying in regards to the potential hole to its rivals at first of the occasion.
“We knew that it wasn’t going to be our strongest weekend, however we determined to only give attention to ourselves and attempt to do what was the absolute best end result for us, and I feel we achieved that very properly. We ought to be completely happy. Then we in fact want to have a look at what we will do sooner or later to be sooner on these type of tracks, however this weekend we did work very properly as a crew.”
