Charles Leclerc has detailed how a mid-weekend set-up change enabled him to maximise Ferrari’s upgrades to secure a podium in the Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix.
Leclerc’s impressive recent streak continued with a third top-three finish in four races as he settled for third place behind the dominant McLarens at the Red Bull Ring.
The Monegasque lined up on the front row, but he slipped to third at the start when a compromised run into Turn 1 allowed Oscar Piastri to sweep around the outside.
Leclerc was powerless to rival Lando Norris and Piastri amid McLaren’s pace advantage, though he controlled a reasonable gap to team-mate Lewis Hamilton behind.
Like Hamilton, who lagged nine seconds back, Leclerc admitted Ferrari’s repeated instruction to minimise his pressure on the brake pedal compromised his lap times.
“There weren’t very many key moments on my side,” Leclerc told media including Motorsport Week.
“Obviously, the start, I wish I had done a bit of a better job to be completely alongside Lando. Maybe that would have changed a little bit for three or four laps.
“I don’t think we had the pace to stay there in front. Basically, from Turn 1 to the end, it was a very boring race.
“I was on my own, just trying to manage quite a few issues that we had on our side.
“Let’s not call them issues, but we’ve got to do some management in the situation we’re in at the moment.
“I won’t go into the detail, but the lift and coast was a little bit frustrating.
“We paid a bit of the price for it on the first stint, but then the second and last stint were a bit more positive, which was good. But there weren’t many key moments apart from the start.”
Leclerc denied that Ferrari had expected the updates to propel the team closer to McLaren than the eventual 20-second margin that opened up during the 70-lap race.
“Surprise is probably not the right word,” Leclerc answered when asked whether McLaren’s pace surprised him.
“The first stint was poor on our side, but the second and last stint I thought were reasonable, but I’ve got to look.
“I mean, I was obviously focused on my race, and I didn’t see all the lap times.
“I saw the gap at the end of the race, and it’s not the gap that you would want to see, but that’s unfortunately the gap that we’ve had, if not more, since the beginning of the season.
“For us, we are working a little bit in relative to the others. And for now, this weekend, it’s a step forward, and I hope that we can do another one as soon as possible.”
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However, Leclerc has documented how a radical set-up change prior to the last practice session helped him to extract the potential within Ferrari’s improved package.
“We changed quite a lot of things on the car,” he divulged. “Obviously, I missed FP1, so FP2 was all about trying to understand where we were.
“Then for FP3, we did a big change in order to re-centre ourselves. I think we did a really good job from Friday to Saturday, only with one session to be able to re-centre ourselves.
“As soon as I got into the car in FP3, the car was feeling a lot better.
“I didn’t do the long runs with the set-up of today, but there weren’t any bad surprises as well. I think we did a good job by maximising the car potential this weekend.”
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With more new parts in the pipeline, Leclerc is encouraged that the developments – which contained a revised floor – provided the precise step that Ferrari anticipated.
“They are definitely a step forward,” he addressed. “And I think it helped us to be on the podium today.
“The team has done an incredible job at pushing to try and get them as early as possible.
“I know that they are still pushing extremely hard to have other upgrades as soon as possible, which I hope will make another difference and will help us to be a bit closer to McLaren, to Red Bull in their good days, or to Mercedes even in their good days.
“So, yeah, we are pushing hard, and I hope that we see the result as soon as possible.”
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