“Surprised” Charles Leclerc reflects on “incredible podium in a difficult weekend” for Ferrari. Charles Leclerc achieved an unexpected podium at Zandvoort.

Sometimes the impossible, or nearly so, becomes possible, and miracles become reality. Charles Leclerc delivered an unexpected podium for Ferrari at the Dutch Grand Prix, held this afternoon at the Zandvoort circuit.

Starting from sixth place after a complicated qualifying, Charles Leclerc made a perfect start, overtaking Sergio Perez’s Red Bull RB20 on the outside, moving up to fifth place.

At that point, it seemed that Charles’s race might be over, perhaps spiced up by the return of Perez behind him. However, Ferrari had no trouble managing the Mexican and even began to challenge Oscar Piastri’s McLaren.

Charles Leclerc seemed quicker than the young McLaren driver, but perhaps not able to make the overtake on track, also due to George Russell being ahead of Oscar Piastri. At that point, Ferrari risked an undercut, which worked perfectly.

The Monegasque found himself ahead of both Piastri and Russell, in third. He then had to contain Piastri’s comeback and did so impeccably, despite having a set of tires with 8 more laps than his rival.

“I am very, very surprised by this result,” Charles Leclerc said at the end of the race. “I’m not often happy to finish a race in third place, but with what we did today, we can be totally happy with the race we had, because it was a difficult weekend for us.”

“We struggled from Friday through to the race, but today we had more pace and put together a perfect strategy. We managed to overtake our rivals and then keep them behind; we had a great race, and I’m happy to start the second part of the season this way.”

Charles Leclerc then expressed his amazement at being able to keep a McLaren, a Red Bull, and both Mercedes behind, finishing the race as the third-strongest car and on the third step of the podium.

“At the start, I made a nice overtake on Perez. We knew we had an opportunity at the start, but what I didn’t know was that during the race, we would also have the opportunity to keep them all behind. I did know, however, that the start would be a good opportunity for us to get behind one or two cars. I just attacked, and the overtake went well, but I would never have thought of reaching the podium on such a difficult weekend for the team.” – the Monegasque driver concluded.