Charles Leclerc labelled second place as “like a victory” for Ferrari in the wake of the marque’s struggles at Formula 1’s season-opening Austrian Grand Prix.
Ferrari had only the fifth-fastest car during qualifying, leaving Leclerc only seventh, while team-mate Sebastian Vettel failed to make it through to Q3.
Leclerc held position through the opening stages and remained adrift from the lead pack, gaining a spot solely due to Max Verstappen retiring.
But Leclerc subsequently went on the offensive and overhauled both Lando Norris and Sergio Perez, before profiting when Alexander Albon and Lewis Hamilton collided.
It left Leclerc third on the road and he was promoted to second once Hamilton’s five-second time penalty was applied.
“Well I’m extremely happy,” said Leclerc. “It feels like a victory today.
“We have been struggling from the beginning of the weekend. We’ve had luck in this race with the various safety cars, crashes, penalties but in the end we stayed on track.
“I gave my maximum and I think we managed the race perfectly with the package we have for the moment and to have a P2, a second place, with the performance we had all weekend, we made the best out of it.
“I’m extremely happy about our result because the performance is not where we want to be.”
Ferrari had expected its SF1000 to be more competitive in race trim compared to qualifying but Leclerc accepted that it hopes proved unfounded.
“No. No, unfortunately not,” he said on whether the race pace was stronger.
“We are quick around the corners but we struggle, so we will have a new package in Hungary to try to fix a little bit more this issue.
“But we will see. It has been a very, very difficult race today, struggling to overtake and every time someone was making a mistake then I was being very aggressive to try to take the opportunity, which I did, and I’m very happy again to be P2.”
