Following his emotional win at the Monaco Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc and Ferrari were tantalizingly close to Red Bull atop the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship standings, just 24 points behind.
Since then, however, Ferrari has been on the back foot. Between Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr., the team managed just a pair of podiums before the summer shutdown, and they limped into the break having slid down to third in the standings.
The Dutch Grand Prix seemed to offer more of the same. Both drivers struggled in practice, and on Saturday Leclerc managed to scrape into Q3, while Sainz missed out on the third segment of qualifying altogether. A strong result — much less a podium — seemed a pipe dream.
That changed on Sunday. Not only did Sainz recover to finish fifth but Leclerc put together a masterful drive, holding off Oscar Piastri to finish third, capturing his seventh podium of the season.
Following the race, Leclerc hailed the “good surprise” Zandvoort offered.
“Yesterday, we’ve been struggling like crazy. Today, we were strong. And these are the kind of things that we’ve got to work on. I think as much as we analyse every bad surprise we have during a season, we also need to understand when we do something good,” said Leclerc in the FIA Press Conference. “For now, I don’t think as a team we have the explanation. So it’s a great result. I’m really happy to be standing on the podium. And I think it’s a really good surprise. However, we’ve got to understand in order to perform more often at our best.”
The Ferrari driver admitted that he did not believe he would hold off Piastri down the stretch.
“It wasn’t [easy to find a rhythm at the end], because my engineer was telling me about Oscar’s lap time, which when he was in free air was quite a bit quicker than me, I think nearly a second. Then when he got closer, I started to push a bit more and gain five tenths. And I think with the dirty air, he probably lost three or four tenths,” described Leclerc. “He managed to stay behind and to put me quite under pressure for two, three laps, but then couldn’t stay there because of the overheating. It was a really good strategy. I did not expect to keep that third place until the end, but we did a really good job as a team. I don’t think there was anything more we could have done today.”
Looking ahead, the calendar offers circuits that may be favorable for Ferrari. The Italian Grand Prix is next weekend, with the Scuderia expected to bring their next series of upgrades to their home race at Monza. That race is followed by Azerbaijan — where Leclerc finished third in the Grand Prix last season — and Singapore, where Sainz emerged victorious a year ago.
Leclerc conceded that he was optimistic about the upcoming schedule, but did offer a catch.
“If you will have asked me that question yesterday, I will have told you it will be very difficult,” said Leclerc when asked about the upcoming races. “Today is much better. If we manage to understand what’s going on with our car, then I’m quite optimistic about the future. But for now, we don’t quite have the understanding yet.
With that qualification, Leclerc admitted that the upcoming part of the schedule is “super important” for Ferrari.
“It’s super important. I think we’ve had three or four races four races ago where we were experimenting quite a lot to try and understand what were the fundamental issues of our car for the development, medium-term. We’ve got an upgrade coming very soon. Now I can say actually because Fred [Vasseur]said it, so it will be in Monza,” said Leclerc. And that, I hope, will help us and help us close the gap.
“But until the upgrades, I always said that the priority for us was just to do a damage limitation. And today, we were targeting P6. Realistically, I think on paper, that’s what we were fighting for. However, after three, four laps, the pace was there,” added Leclerc. “And we called do P3, which is a good surprise again. So good points. However, now I just hope that the upgrades helps us to do a step forward.”