After his emotional victory at the Monaco Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc and Ferrari were at the top of the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship, just 24 points behind Red Bull.
Since then, however, Ferrari has fallen behind. With Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr., the team only managed one podium finish before the summer break, and by the break they had slipped to third place in the overall standings.
The Dutch Grand Prix seemed to offer the same. Both drivers struggled in practice and on Saturday Leclerc just made it into Q3 while Sainz missed the third part of qualifying altogether. A good result – let alone a podium – seemed a pipe dream.
That changed on Sunday. Not only did Sainz recover to finish fifth, but Leclerc also delivered a masterful drive, beating Oscar Piastri to finish third, securing his seventh podium of the season.
After the race, Leclerc praised the “positive surprise” that Zandvoort had offered.
“Yesterday we fought like crazy. Today we were strong. And these are the things we need to work on. I think as much as we analyse every bad surprise we experience during a season, we also need to understand when we do something good,” said Leclerc in the FIA press conference. “At the moment I don’t think we as a team have the explanation. So it’s a great result. I’m really happy to be on the podium. And I think it’s a really good surprise. But we need to understand it in order to perform at our best more often.”
The Ferrari driver admitted that he did not believe he would be able to leave Piastri behind on the home straight.
“It wasn’t easy to find a rhythm at the end because my engineer told me about Oscar’s lap time, which was quite a bit faster than mine in free air, I think almost a second. Then when he got closer, I started to push a bit more and gained five tenths. And I think with the dirty air he probably lost three or four tenths,” described Leclerc. “He managed to stay behind me and put me under quite a bit of pressure for two or three laps, but then couldn’t stay there because of the overheating. It was a really good strategy. I didn’t expect to hold third place until the end, but we did a really good job as a team. I don’t think we could have done more today.”
The calendar offers circuits that could be in Ferrari’s favour. Next weekend is the Italian Grand Prix and the Scuderia is expected to bring its next series of upgrades to its home race at Monza. After that comes Azerbaijan – where Leclerc finished third in the Grand Prix last season – and Singapore, where Sainz was victorious last year.
Leclerc admitted he was optimistic about the upcoming schedule, but offered a catch.
“If you had asked me this question yesterday, I would have told you it would be very difficult,” said Leclerc when asked about the upcoming races. “Today it is much better. If we understand what is going on with our car, then I am quite optimistic for the future. But at the moment we don’t quite understand it yet.”
With this caveat, Leclerc acknowledged that the upcoming part of the schedule is “super important” for Ferrari.
“It’s super important. I think we had three or four races ago where we experimented quite a bit to find out what the fundamental problems of our car were for the medium-term development. We’re getting an upgrade soon. Now I can actually say, because Fred (Vasseur) said it, that it will be like this in Monza,” said Leclerc. And hopefully that will help us and help us close the gap.
“But until the upgrades, I always said that our priority was just damage limitation. And today we were aiming for P6. On paper, that was realistically our goal. But after three or four laps, the pace was there,” added Leclerc. “And we got P3, which is another good surprise. So good points. But now I just hope that the upgrades help us take a step forward.”
