Charles Leclerc says he would have signed up for a second place within the Qatar Grand Prix forward of the race after being stunned by Ferrari’s capacity to take factors off McLaren.
Max Verstappen held of Lando Norris in an in depth battle for almost all of Sunday’s race, with Leclerc operating third after a number of security automotive durations. Norris then acquired a penalty that dropped him out of rivalry and after beating Oscar Piastri to second place, Leclerc was delighted to shut the hole within the constructors’ championship to 21 factors.
“Actually, I’d have signed immediately if I had a paper that instructed 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 are usually not becoming very effectively 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 battle might be all the best way 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 might be very troublesome pace-wise. We anticipated McLaren to be very sturdy when it comes to race tempo. We perhaps didn’t count on Max to be that sturdy, however he was tremendous sturdy.
“Nonetheless, ending second after such a weekend, the place the monitor traits are very far off from the optimum we want for our automotive, is a shock.
“We bought a bit of bit fortunate, clearly on my aspect. A bit unfortunate with Carlos and his puncture. However as a workforce, it’s been a constructive weekend. So sure, we exceeded our expectations as a result of coming into the weekend, I form 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 stunned itself was by accepting it was unlikely to be overly aggressive and never worrying in regards to the potential hole to its rivals in the beginning 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 believe we achieved that very effectively. We ought to be joyful. Then we after all want to take a look at what we will do sooner or later to be quicker on these form of tracks, however this weekend we did work very effectively as a workforce.”
