Leclerc left ‘very surprised’ by podium result in Zandvoort after difficult weekend for Ferrari

Charles Leclerc could not hide his surprise after finishing the Dutch Grand Prix on the podium in third place, having started from sixth on the grid on what has been a challenging weekend for Ferrari.

Both Leclerc and team mate Carlos Sainz had played down the team’s prospects following difficult days on Friday and Saturday, with Leclerc especially disappointed to be one second away from pole position in qualifying.

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However, it turned out to be a much better Sunday in Zandvoort than the Scuderia had anticipated. Leclerc made a good start and took a position from Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, before then pressuring Oscar Piastri in the battle for fourth.

As the race unfolded, Leclerc got ahead of the McLaren and crossed the line in a solid P3, a result that the Monegasque admitted he had not expected.

“[I’m] very, very surprised,” Leclerc explained immediately after the Grand Prix. “I’m not very often happy with P3, but I think with today’s race we can be extremely happy with the job we’ve done on a difficult weekend for the team.

“We’ve been struggling from Friday until the race. In the race we found some more pace, executed a perfect strategy, we undercut two of our competitors and then we managed to keep them behind. So a really strong race for the team – [I’m] really happy to start the second half [of the season] like this.”

Reflecting on his Lap 1 move on Perez, Leclerc added: “At the start I knew it was a big opportunity – I didn’t know that later on we would also have the pace to keep him behind. But I knew that the first lap was an opportunity for us to gain one or two positions.

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“I went for pass, it all worked well, but never would I have thought I would stand on the podium after such a difficult weekend for the team.”

Sainz echoed Leclerc’s sentiments in terms of Ferrari’s pace being unexpected, with the Spaniard recovering from his Q2 exit in Saturday’s qualifying – which saw him start from P10, having been promoted after Alex Albon’s disqualification – to end Sunday’s race in P5.

“It was a bit of a surprise for me, I’m not going to lie,” Sainz said of the car’s performance. “Our best predictions of our damage limitation today was P7, P8, so to actually make it to P5 is better than expected.

“I would have never expected to be able to pass a Red Bull and a Mercedes at a track like this, but it’s true that our pace today was really, really strong. I felt very at home in the car since the laps to the grid and I at least thought that we might have a chance to make a bit of a comeback. So yeah, I enjoyed that one.”

Quizzed on whether the performance almost made things more confusing for Ferrari, Sainz acknowledged that the team need to try to understand their lack of consistency.

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“Yeah, I think you need to wait until the end of the weekend to assess the whole weekend performance, and it’s clear that obviously with a normal weekend [in] Q3 yesterday I should have made it, but not better than P6, P7 like Charles was,” the 29-year-old commented.

“And then it’s clear that our car this year seems to be better suited for the race than for qualifying, and we seem to have a weakness on switching the tyres on or something about the car in quali that is not quite working, because in the race it’s a much better race car.

“Points are given on Sundays so I’d rather have a car that allows me to attack on Sunday, but we need to find the right trade-off and the right balance between quali and the race.”