Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc admitted an unfancied podium result at Zandvoort for Formula 1’s Dutch Grand Prix is “super important” ahead of the Scuderia’s home round at Monza next weekend.
Leclerc was ninth in Friday afternoon practice and sixth in Saturday’s qualifying session with his team-mate Carlos Sainz resigned to a Q2 exit.
However, at a track where Ferrari didn’t expect much of a result, Leclerc and Sainz romped through the field to take third and fifth respectively.
With stronger circuits and an upgrade package coming up for Ferrari, Leclerc noted how important it is for the Italian squad to build momentum moving forward.
The Monegasque driver told Motorsport Week that the pace on Sunday is “super important.
“I think we’ve had three or 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 [in Monza] 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. And we could 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.”
Ferrari has been burnt by upgrades before and its path back to ensuring Leclerc two successive podiums has been fraught with performance issues since the Spanish Grand Prix in May.
Again, even at Zandvoort Ferrari’s pace fluctuated from Friday through Sunday and Leclerc said the team needs to discover not only why it was fast on race day, but why it struggled beforehand.
“I think the best question is also to understand why we were nine tenths off yesterday and suddenly pretty strong today,” he said.
“The car is exactly the same. 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.
“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.”
