Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc claimed a surprising P2 at the Red Bull Ring, and praised the team for ‘taking every opportunity”.
Charles Leclerc finished P2 at the Red Bull Ring, after a change to a fresh set of Medium tyres under a late Safety Car played into Ferrari’s hands.
As a result, Leclerc was able to pass Sergio Perez in the late stages and finish P2 when Lewis Hamilton was given a five second time penalty for colliding with Red Bull’s Alex Albon.
Afterwards, Leclerc praised the team for a surprising result on a weekend where Ferrari have struggled for any sort of pace: “A huge surprise but a.good one.”
“I think we did everything perfect today to be honest to finish second. We had a little bit of luck obviously with Lewis’ penalty, some crashes here and there but it’s part of the race too and that was the goal. To take every opportunity we have enough though we didn’t have the pace to finish where we were I think.”
“P2 I am extremely satisfied.” Leclerc continued. “There is still a lot of work to do and we are still far away. We are not where we want to be but anything is possible so we need to keep the mental strength through all the team, work as a team and I am pretty sure we can come back where we want but it will take time.”
Speaking about his late overtakes on Lando Norris and Sergio Perez, Leclerc said: “I wanted to be very aggressive because every Safety Car restart I was struggling exit of Turn 1 all the way to Turn 3.”
“I knew there was no opportunity for me here but I knew that my opportunity will come if someone make a mistake and Lando slowed down little bit with Sergio Perez at one point and I just went for it. The other one with Sergio also was pretty tough but I really enjoyed it.”
The other Ferrari finished down in P10, as Sebastian Vettel fell down the field midway through the race when he spun while trying to pass Carlos Sainz.
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